Nigeria’s basic education system is presently underperforming, as states poorly utilise the N666 billion Universal Basic Education (UBE) funds disbursed to the 36 states and Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, between 2004 till date, BusinessDay has been told.
Dikko Suleiman, immediate past executive secretary of Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), speaking with BusinessDay in an exclusive interview, said “Nigeria would have become a global model in providing basic education if the funds were properly utilised,” as he called for strict sanctions on defaulting states.
Suleiman called for a repeal of the act establishing the UBEC because the Commission lacked the legal powers to even sanction defaulting states.
Speaking with BusinessDay last Monday, few hours before he was replaced, Suleiman said the Commission had succeeded in bringing life to basic education, most especially in infrastructure development.
The Commission has given N9 billion to each state from 2004 to date, for the development of basic education across the country, he said.
UBEC was established in 2004 to co-ordinate the implementation of the programme at the states and local governments, through the State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) of each state and the Local Government Education Authorities (LGEAs).
“Each state collects N1 billion but they are expected to pay a counterpart fund of N1 billion. So, once the state brings a bank teller showing that they have put in N1 billion in the UBE account, we release N1 billion and the state will now use the N2 billion to develop basic education,” Suleiman told BusinessDay.
According to figures from the United Nations International Children’s Fund (UNICEF), as of 2015, no fewer than 10.5 million Nigerian children of school age were out of school.
He further said the state governments should be blamed for poor infrastructure, lack of educational materials and capacity building for teachers, among others.
“There has been so much misconception about the function of UBEC; many people think UBEC is responsible for the quality, quantity and equity of basic education in the country. Little do they know that all these lie in the hands of states and local governments.
“UBEC is only an interventionist body; it is just an assistance from the Federal Government to providing basic education. So, most of our funds are sent to the states for the development of basic education,” Suleiman said.
On the issue of states not paying promptly their counterpart funding, he recalled his earlier suggestion to the federal government to reduce the 50 percent counterpart funding to 5 percent to make it easier for states to pay.
Expressing frustration of the commission to control expenditure of the states, Suleiman averred that unless the act establishing UBEC is amended it would continue to be handicapped.
“We can’t convict anybody, we are handicap. Ours is just to write reports when lapses are noticed and submit to the governors and the Federal Government where all the challenges noticed are stated. This is our inability to control basic education,” he said.
Nyesom Wike, current governor of Rivers State, had as the supervising minister of education in 2014, admitted there were huge non-accessed UBE funds, a situation he said was impeding the success.
He also attributed the lack of progress to large number of unqualified teachers in the system in many states despite the N19 billion was spent on training about 825,035 teachers.
“Non-response from states to their responsibility of recruiting and paying of facilitators’ allowances based on minimum standard of N7,500 per month as agreed for the Mass and Adult literacy Programmes; Lack of willingness by end-users to adopt the implementation procedure for the new school curriculum, low girl-child enrolment and boy-child drop-out, conflict between public policies in education at the federal level and implementation trends at state and local levels in the primary and secondary education sub-sector,” Wike said.
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