Fresh revelations that 27 states failed to access a total of N54.9 billion Universal Basic Education fund by not providing commensurate counterpart funding, accentuate Nigeria’s education underdevelopment. The funds are lying fallow, despite the massive number of out-of-school children in the country.
A PUNCH report said the figure was obtained from UBEC, detailing state-by-state status as of March.
This indifference depicts the lackadaisical disposition of governors to advancing human capital at the grassroots. The affected governors must change this.
The document stated that Kaduna failed to access the sum of N1.3billion in 2023; Kano N581million in the same year, with Katsina and Kebbi states also failing to access N1.3 billion each in 2023. Adamawa and Bauchi failed to access the funds from 2022 (N1.2 billion) and 2023 (N1.3 billion) respectively.
Gombe failed to access N1.3 billion in 2023, while Yobe did not access the same amount in the same year. Benue, Kwara, and Niger states had a backlog of N2.6 billion individually, having failed to access the intervention funds in 2022 and 2023.
Kogi, Plateau states, and the FCT currently have N1.3 billion each not accessed. Ekiti and Lagos states failed to access N1.3 billion each from the 2023 disbursement.
Further analysis of the data showed that Ogun failed to access intervention funds from 2020 to 2023, taking its total amount not accessed to N4.2 billion. Like Ogun, Abia failed to access N4.2 billion from 2020 to 2023, while Rivers had the sum of N697 million with the commission. Osun and Oyo states currently have N1.3 billion and N2.6 billion with the commission respectively.
Anambra and Ebonyi states did not access N2.6 billion each, while the fund not accessed by Imo stood at N3.5 billion, being the accumulation from 2021 to 2023. Akwa Ibom and Bayelsa failed to access N1.3 billion each from the 2023 disbursement, while Edo has N2.6 billion with the commission from the 2022 and 2023 disbursements.
The total amount abandoned by states in 2020 stood at N1.4 billion; N2.8 billion in 2021; N14.4 billion in 2022 and N36.1 billion in 2023.
In contrast, Jigawa, Sokoto, Zamfara, Borno, Taraba, Ondo, Delta, Nasarawa, and Enugu have fully accessed their funds. This is admirable.
Although the constitution saddles the states with primary education, the Federal Government contributes to standards, infrastructure and teaching facilities, training, and retraining of teachers. Yet, many governors are detached from the UBEC scheme. This foists child labour, poor out-of-school indices, juvenile delinquency, child begging, and child marriages on Nigerian children.
According to UNESCO, 20.2 million Nigerian children are out of school, the second highest rate in the world behind India’s. UNICEF states that one in five out-of-school children in the world resides in Nigeria and over 3.3 million students drop out of school before junior secondary school.
A 2022 paper by the International Journal of Integrated Education linked the high dropout rates to poor funding of education, corruption, poor implementation of the Child’s Rights Act, lack of political will to address the problems, high rate of poverty, and high fertility rate. UNICEF said 11,536 schools were shut in the North between December 2020 and April 2022 because of violence.
State governors must reverse the trend by actively engaging stakeholders, providing free primary education, delivering conducive and secure learning spaces, and deploying robust personnel of motivated and incentivised teachers. They should domesticate and enforce the CRA, which mandates the first nine years of compulsory schooling, and contribute their counterpart funding to access the UBE funds.
In 2019, the EFCC accused a former governor of diverting billions of naira released by UBEC to a North-East state. State legislatures should fulfil their oversight duties by ensuring the transparent and accountable use of the funds.
