The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship amongst innovation, strategic agility and firms’ resilience in Nigerian tertiary institutions. A descriptive research design was em-ployed with a sample size of 492 top management respondents from selected tertiary institu-tions, using SPSS and structural equation modeling (SEM) for analysis and hypotheses test-ing. The authors found that innovation and strategic agility predict a firms’ resilience in ter-tiary institutions in Nigeria. This paper complements the limited literatures on education at post-secondary level by providing a model and empirical indications on innovation being a mechanism underlying resilience capability among tertiary institutions in Nigeria.