FG Introduces Online Teachers for Schools, Offers Students Free Data

Abdulhameed Sherif · Report · Nov 4, 2026

The Federal Government has launched "Inspire Live," a virtual teaching programme to connect pupils in underserved schools with qualified instructors through live online lessons.

The Federal Government has introduced an online teaching programme that will allow pupils in schools without qualified subject teachers to receive lessons from instructors remotely, while also providing free internet data to enable students to access the platform.

The initiative, known as Inspire Live, is designed to address the shortage of teachers in underserved communities and improve access to education, particularly in rural areas where schools struggle to find qualified personnel for certain subjects.

Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, disclosed this during an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Tuesday night. He explained that the programme would connect pupils in primary, junior secondary and senior secondary schools with qualified teachers through live and interactive online classes.

Under the arrangement, schools without teachers for particular subjects would be able to follow a central timetable and connect their pupils to instructors conducting lessons remotely. This would allow children to continue receiving instruction without waiting for additional teachers to be recruited or posted to their schools.

Alausa used Kaura Namoda in Zamfara State to illustrate how the programme would work. He explained that pupils in a school without an English Language teacher could access the platform and participate in lessons delivered by an instructor elsewhere in the country.

“Any school, say you are in Kaura Namoda today and you don’t have an English teacher, you can go online and log on when that teacher will be teaching English. You can log on to it in an interactive way,” he said.

The minister explained that Inspire Live was developed to cover all subjects contained in Nigeria’s approved school curriculum, including English Language, Mathematics, Social Studies, Civic Education, Nigerian History, Physics, Chemistry and Biology. He dismissed suggestions that the programme covered only selected subjects, stressing that students would have access to instruction across the curriculum.

According to Alausa, the platform would operate with an organised timetable to guide participating schools, enabling teachers and school administrators to know when particular subjects would be taught. He also explained that students would not depend entirely on live classes, as the platform would contain recorded lessons that could be accessed whenever necessary.

“They will have recorded lessons. You just need to log on, and you get linked to a live teacher. You can also go and do a recorded lecture,” he stated.

One of the major provisions highlighted by the minister is the government’s plan to eliminate data charges for students accessing the platform. Alausa said the Federal Government had reached an arrangement with the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to provide zero-rated internet data for the educational service.

The arrangement is expected to remove the cost of purchasing data as a barrier for pupils, especially those from low-income households and communities where access to digital learning resources remains limited.

“We have collaborated with the Nigerian Communications Commission. We have zero-rated data, free data, to log on to the site. You log on free, you get live teachers,” Alausa said.

Beyond providing online teachers for pupils, Alausa revealed that the government had also introduced another initiative, known as Ignite, to support teachers with lesson preparation and access to curriculum materials. He described Ignite as a cloud-based platform designed to help educators prepare lesson plans, access relevant teaching resources and improve classroom delivery.

The minister also disclosed that the Federal Government was implementing a Teacher Preparedness Programme, which currently supports almost 50,000 teachers across the country. According to him, the programme is designed to strengthen teachers’ professional skills, improve their preparedness and enhance the quality of education delivered to pupils.

Alausa maintained that the government’s education reforms were focused on providing support for both students and teachers, stressing that improving the education sector required strengthening classroom instruction while expanding access to learning opportunities.

The initiatives come amid persistent concerns over inadequate teaching personnel and the uneven distribution of teachers across Nigeria’s public schools. Data from the Federal Ministry of Education’s Digital Nigeria Education Management Information System, obtained in August 2026, showed that 31,827,244 pupils in public schools were being taught by 592,077 teachers, representing a learner-teacher ratio of 53.8 to one.