Ogona Anita
By King Onunwor
In homes across Nigeria, a silent but damaging practice is taking root—one that threatens the academic future of millions of children in primary and secondary schools.
The act seems harmless on the surface: older siblings completing their homework directly inside their school textbooks. But this seemingly minor convenience is creating a dangerous ripple effect.
It’s a quiet academic crisis that has now become a source of distress for countless parents, a stumbling block for students, and a ticking time bomb for the education system.
What used to be a normal practice—siblings reusing textbooks year after year to ease the financial burden on families—has now turned into a nightmare.
The textbooks passed down from one child to another are no longer clean, usable, or even educational. Instead, they are filled with written answers, classwork, and hastily jotted notes, making it nearly impossible for younger children to engage meaningfully with the content.
For many families, especially those living on minimum wage or below, buying new textbooks every school year is simply not an option. In Nigeria’s public schools, where education is meant to be “free,” the cost of textbooks still falls heavily on the shoulders of parents.
As a result, textbook reuse within families has long been a cost-saving strategy. But that strategy is failing fast.
Marked-up textbooks don’t just present a cosmetic problem—they sabotage the very essence of learning. Younger siblings are now handed materials that have already been “solved.”
They are discouraged from thinking critically, because the answers are already there, inked across the margins.
In some cases, these children simply copy the answers, assuming they’re correct. In other cases, they skip lessons because the mess inside the book makes learning impossible.
Teachers, already stretched thin by overpopulated classrooms and insufficient materials, now have to deal with students who cannot follow along because their textbooks are rendered useless. The result? Classroom gaps widen, performance suffers, and students lose confidence.
The situation is even more dire in rural and low-income urban areas where textbooks are shared not only among siblings but also between neighbors and classmates. A single defaced textbook can mislead multiple students. The damage multiplies.
Consider the experience of the Musa family in Kaduna. With four children in public school, they rely heavily on hand-me-down books.
Their youngest son, Hassan, recently failed a mathematics test not because he didn’t study, but because the textbook he used was filled with incorrect, scribbled answers from an older brother. “We didn’t realize until the damage was done,” said Mrs. Musa. “Now we have to spend money we don’t have to get new textbooks.”
It’s not just an inconvenience it’s criminal negligence. When students are forced to rely on damaged or misleading learning materials, their right to quality education is fundamentally violated.
Parents who struggle to provide for their children now face another burden: replacing textbooks that should have lasted for years.
This practice must stop immediately. The Federal Ministry of Education cannot continue to overlook this creeping crisis.
Urgent directives must be issued to all primary and secondary schools across the country: homework and assignments must never be executed inside textbooks. This should become a standing rule, enforced at every level.
There should be nationwide awareness campaigns involving Parent Teacher Associations (PTAs), school boards, local government education offices, and the media. Families must be educated on the long-term damage of using textbooks for assignments. Students should be taught, from the earliest stages, that textbooks are reference materials not notebooks.
To aid enforcement, schools should conduct textbook audits at the beginning and end of every term. Teachers should examine textbooks for signs of misuse and educate both students and parents on proper usage.
Penalties for repeated violations must be considered not to punish, but to drive home the seriousness of the issue.
Furthermore, the Ministry must consider subsidizing the production and distribution of standardized exercise books, which can be used for classwork and homework. If students have ample writing materials, the temptation to write in textbooks diminishes.
Publishers also have a role to play. Textbooks could come with detachable worksheets or companion workbooks, separating practice materials from the core text.
Digital textbook solutions—where affordable should be encouraged in urban areas, to allow more families access to reusable content.
But technology is not a silver bullet. In rural communities, the solution must still center on preserving the lifespan of print textbooks. Ministries of education at the state level must integrate textbook maintenance into their basic education policies, alongside infrastructure, teacher training, and curriculum development.
This issue speaks to something bigger than books. It exposes how fragile the support systems around education have become. If Nigeria is to meet its targets for literacy, school enrollment, and youth development, it must address not only the big problems but also these smaller, dangerous oversights that quietly poison the learning process.
There is no time to waste. Every term that passes sees more textbooks ruined, more students misled, and more families drained financially. The impact is cumulative, and irreversible in many cases.
Textbooks are an essential part of the learning ecosystem. When they are misused, the entire structure begins to crack. What we’re witnessing is not just careless behavior, but a systemic failure to protect educational tools.
Let us be clear: a child should never be punished academically because their sibling did math homework on the same page two years earlier. That is not just unjust—it’s unacceptable.
Nigeria’s promise to provide quality education for all must include a guarantee that learning materials are used properly, preserved, and accessible to every student, regardless of birth order or economic background.
It is time for a national textbook integrity policy a written commitment to stop this damaging habit and restore dignity to our learning environments. Let this policy be loud, binding, and immediate.
Parents must be reminded of their responsibility to provide exercise books. Schools must be empowered to enforce textbook rules. State and federal governments must invest in campaigns, materials, and monitoring systems.
If we wait longer, more children will lose their educational footing—not because they didn’t try, but because the tools they were given were already broken.
The handwriting is on the wall literally. It’s time to stop writing in the books and start writing the future we want for Nigerian education.
Onunwor is a practicing lawyer and a Chief Correspondent with The Tide Newspaper.
Port Harcourt.
kingonunwor@gmail.co
