In a clear departure from previous practice, the Federal Government is making a spirited move to enable states to receive hundreds of billions of naira, being a five-year backlog of Universal Basic Education (UBE) Fund.
The backlog dated back to the former President Muhammadu Buhari’s second term in 2020.
The Guardian gathered that the President, on his return from Paris last week, approved the plan by the Minister of Education, which included updated information of how the funds can transform basic education in each of the over 30 states expected to benefit from this new strategy.
The new strategy developed by Dr Tunji Alausa and endorsed by the President, according to a top Presidency source, is to indicate to each governor how the funds could change the fortunes of primary education in terms of teachers’ training, buildings of classrooms, safe learning environments, and how out-of-school figures would be significantly reduced.
Governors of relevant states have started receiving the communication from the Minister of Education detailing the data on out-of-school situation and other basic education challenges in their states.
The Presidency source said the President’s plan was “to positively arm-twist” the state governments to urgently access the UBE funds running into hundreds of billions, which many states often ignore on the excuse of inability to raise the counterpart funds.
In the past, while most states ignored the funds by not meeting the matching funds, the Federal Government too simply remained laid back, uninspired by the excuses.
But the Aso Villa source said: “The Education Minister came up with the plan to tease out the interests of the governors by supplying data on how much transformation is possible with the funds and decided to communicate this directly to the affected governors.”
In a copy of such communication reportedly addressed to the Ogun State governor, whose state is one of those that have not accessed the UBEC funds since 2020, the minister wrote that Ogun was entitled to N7,816,600,698.99 (unaccessed between 2020 and 2024 as UBE matching grant).
To access the funds, the minister urged Governor Dapo Abiodun to provide an equal amount as a counterpart fund, in compliance with Section 11(2) of the UBE Act 2004.
The minister wrote a similar letter to all the governors affected.
Culled from The Guardian
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