Fallen Standard Of Education: Govs, Banks Also Responsible – Investigation

Every Nigerian knows about the crusade on the fallen standard of education and all fingers seem to point at the federal government. However, investigation has revealed that some state governors connive with banks to dupe Nigerians of their fundamental rights to good education as the federal government only intervenes in basic education while states take full responsibility. Kuni Tyessi writes.

“The federal government has no control of basic education at all.‎ We don’t employ teachers, we don’t provide the materials and logistics. So the states are in control and they supervise the quality. We don’t have the law to prosecute any state because the mandate of the federal government is regulatory and intervention.” These are the words of the executive secretary of the Universal Basic Education Commission, Dr Suleiman Dikko when LEADERSHIP had an exclusive chat with him at the office headquaters in Abuja.

He reveals that the Act guiding the commission says that the federal government will contribute N1 billion and the states will give equal contribution and then at the end of the day, the states will go with N2 billion to put in their basic education. With this no doubt, education will be given a boost.

However, there is a twist as he further reveals that One thing also is that some of the states that access the counterpart funding play some tricks. “The governors will connive with some banks and borrow money and when they get that of the UBEC, they withdraw and return. Despite that, they have to bring an action plan of how they will utilise the money before it is approved and released.”

“But you know Nigeria been what it was. The governors will go and expedite government’s N1 billion and when we go round, we will discover that the projects were not adequately done. They usually multiply the projects into two i.e after refunding the bank’s N1 billion, they will have to cover up in the projects with the counterpart N1 billion. This is why we have substandard structures in most of our primary schools because the money that have been given to them to do the job is slashed by half and then they multiply the projects.”

“The substandard nature of the projects can be visibly seen but we have no right to question their quality in the sense that we are only asked to go and audit. We don’t have a specification which we give them. They have their own specification which we approve. If I were to advise, since 2004 till date, basic education, most especially, is not improving despite all the grants that were given to states. Let the federal government do it directly at least for one or two years. Then we can compare and see what the states were doingand what the federal government itself is doing.”

“Once the present attitude is allowed to continue, it will be a case of gabbage in and gabbage out because sending illiterate educated children to the universities doesn’t have its root cause in the institutions in terms of lack of facilities but in the poor foundation of education in the country in basic education and that has to do with the states. If the states are determined and willing,they can revive our educational system and what I mostly observe is that each of the state administratorsalways engage themselves in other thingsrather than education.”

“Education is a consumable aspect of the society and they would not like it because they would not have a return. That’s why some of these states hate basic education and that’s why no supervision, inspection,auditing and they are not assisting so many things.”

“We didn’t say the states are not accessing at all but the speed and rate which they are accessing the money is unappreciable and disheartening. They only access when they have a need, any state governor that has the interest of basic education will not wait to find outwhether UBEC has his state’s money.”

“We got many complaints from the chairmen and chairpersons stating that the governors were not allowing them to access the funds and when they talk to their commissioners of education, some of them will not convey the message to the governors.”