Nigeria introduced Digital Technologies, a subject that carries coding, robotics and artificial intelligence (AI), into the Junior Secondary curriculum from the 2025/2026 session, and released the National Artificial Intelligence Strategy ten days after the approved subject list. The Strategy committed government to teacher training but attached no budget line to it. This paper analysed how that funding architecture conditioned the readiness of teachers in rural and urban schools of North-Central Nigeria, namely Benue, Kogi, Kwara, Nasarawa, Niger, Plateau and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). The study applied qualitative content analysis to the Strategy, the 2025 and 2026 federal education budgets, Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) returns, national household and school surveys, and comparator frameworks from Estonia, Kenya, Rwanda and the Republic of Korea. Findings revealed a curriculum mandated nationally but resourced locally. UBEC's 2026 allocation fell by 31.39 per cent, and information and communications technology received 0.11 per cent of the identifiable basic-education capital envelope. In North-Central Nigeria, 66.3 per cent of residents were multidimensionally poor and 53.2 per cent of households had no electricity; across the country, rural junior secondary schools had 35 students per digital device against 20 in urban schools, and only 20.1 per cent of rural households had internet access against 51.2 per cent of urban households. Because the available teacher training was largely virtual, rural North-Central teachers carried the steepest readiness deficit. The paper was rounded off with a costed amendment to the Universal Basic Education Act, carrying a rural-priority envelope, for the 2027 fiscal cycle.