About N60 billion Universal Basic Education (UBE) fund meant to be accessed and used for the growth of basic education by states is lying idle with the Central Bank of Nigeria, Executive Secretary, Universal Basic Education Commission Dr. Hamid Bobboyi has said.
The matching grant, which is an intervention fund disbursed by the Federal Government to states through the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), is meant to support the development of basic education and implementation of UBE scheme.
Bobboyi, who spoke at a meeting with education correspondents in Abuja, said the inability of many states to access the intervention fund had hampered the growth of basic education.
According to the statistics obtained from the commission on the un-accessed matching grant from 2005 to 2016 as at March 31, only two states, Borno and Rivers, had so far accessed last year’s grant.
Ebonyi is the least performed state in terms of access and utilisation of the fund as it is yet to access about N4 billion from UBEC.
Other states include: Ebonyi, Enugu and Ondo with over N3 billion each unaccessed.
Bayelsa, Niger, Ogun, and Oyo, each have N2.8 billion un-accessed fund lying idle with the Central Bank of Nigeria.
He said: “On the issue of matching grant to states, if we provide N1billion to a state, the state is expected to bring its own N1billion and this expands the resource base available to the basic education sector.
“This is the reason why I feel very worried that after the Federal Government pays its own matching grant, the state would withdraw its own counterpart fund.
“This is not only against the law, but it negates the entire arrangement that is made in terms of the partnership between the states and the Federal Government.”
Bobboyi lamented that besides refusal to access the fund, some governors were involved in illegal diversion of their states allocation.
He said five states were involved in illegal withdrawal of their counterpart funds after the Federal Government released the matching grant to them.
Besides, he said the commission noticed and closed down the accounts of some states, which placed the funds on fixed deposit .
The UBEC boss added that some outgoing governors allegedly moved the money from the account of the states’ Universal Basic Education Boards (SUBEBs) to the states’ main accounts against the law, thereby creating confusion in the system.
This, he said, created problems for incoming governors. In some cases, UBEC had to ask for the return of the money before such a state could access fresh allocation.
“There are many states that were involved in the withdrawal of funds over a period of time. We don’t go out to embarrass anybody but we take action. The kind of action we take is that if we noticed gross violation, we close down the matching grant account, we freeze it and then ask the state to come and tell us exactly what had happened with the fund,” Bobboyi said.
He, however, said some of these infractions had been minimised with the coming of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration.
The UBEC boss, who hailed some governors for their achievements in basic education, lamented that there were serious challenges, including payment of salaries.
