FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Governors, Stop Killing Nigerian Children — Olabisi Deji-Folutile

A school in a northern state (Image source: nairaland forum)

This is a picture of a so-called block of classrooms for some hapless Nigerian children. It’s a school building for children whose parents are obviously not members of the nation’s political class. Their parents are probably hard-working, but hard work is not wealth. This is a popular proverb in this part of the world.

Of course, one would have thought school buildings like these should only be in war-torn countries or the poorest countries of the world. But then, they are right here in Nigeria- the world’s sixth largest producer of oil.

Interestingly, the state where this school building is situated has refused to access the money that the Federal Government allocated to it to build schools. The money is currently lying idle at the Central Bank of Nigeria.

This state is not alone. Several others have billions of naira with the CBN and their governors have simply refused to access the money. Can you beat that? Right now, state governments are being begged to come and access the over ₦58bn that is available for building schools and uplifting basic education in general in the country.

This is a yearly ritual. Last Thursday, the Executive Secretary of the Universal Basic Education Commission, Dr. Dikko Suleiman,   was literally begging state governors to come and access the billions of naira belonging to their states.

According to him, though the money was supposed to be used to correct infrastructural decay in public schools, many states have refused to access it.

St Paul’s Primary School, Oyero, Ogun State

The Universal Basic Education Programme is a strategy to achieve the goal of Education For All. Although, the financing of basic education should mainly be the responsibility of states and local governments, the Federal Government decided to intervene in the provision of basic education with two per cent of its Consolidated Revenue Fund.

It enacted the UBE Act in 2004. The law makes provision for the establishment of an education commission saddled with the responsibility of coordinating the implementation of the programme at the state and local government levels through the State Universal Basic Education Board.

To access the Federal Government intervention fund, states are expected to provide a similar grant of the amount they intend to draw to boost infrastructure in their schools. In other words, if any state wants to access N1bn from the fund, it will be required to provide a counterpart fund of ₦1 bn.

Besides, the state will also provide an action plan, that is, the projects it will spend the money on and the benefits to be derived from them. But for reasons best known to them, a lot of states have refused to access this free fund. Some have not even drawn from it since 2008.

According to UBEC, only seven states have so far complied with UBEC’s criteria and successfully received their grants in full. They are Sokoto, Katsina, Kano, Gombe, Taraba Anambra and Imo states.

Also, a report on access and utilization of Special Education Fund between 2009 and 2012 shows that 13 states accessed the fund in 2012; 24 including the FCT in 2011; 32 and FCT in 2010 as well as 34 states and FCT in 2009.

The report categorizes states as performers, chronic non-performers, woeful non-performers and non-performers. The chronic non-performing states have only accessed less than 50 per cent of what belongs to them. They include Osun, Borno, Jigawa, Rivers, Delta, Ondo, Akwa Ibom, Edo and Ekiti states. Interestingly, some of these states are oil producing states enjoying special derivation formula.

The woeful non-performers are Ogun, Oyo, Nasarawa, Kogi and Abia states. These states have only accessed 22 per cent of the fund available for their use. The non-performers are Benue, Enugu and Ebonyi states which have only accessed 18 per cent of their money.

How can anyone justify a situation where billions of naira meant to expand access and improve the quality of basic education delivery is deliberately left unutilized, while the problems facing effective basic education delivery stare at us?

Why should any   governor feel comfortable seeing innocent kids study in dilapidated structures that may collapse on them and yet fail to access billions of Naira that could readily   be used to build new classrooms?   Why   should any governor prefer to see money belonging to its state rot in a CBN account when there are several laudable projects that could be executed with the money? I just don’t   understand the logic.

But one thing is obvious. UBEC demands transparency from any state that wants to utilize its funds. The commission also inspects projects to make sure that they are in line with the intended action plan.

I believe this is where many of the governors have problems. They don’t want to be accountable.   They don’t want to be transparent. They prefer to collect the money and spend it without being monitored. They want to award spurious contracts and cover their tracks. They want to misappropriate the money and ‘clean their mouths.’ They want to divert the fund to finance other projects that catch their fancy even if those projects won’t have direct impact on the children. And since they can’t do all these because of the stringent conditions for accessing the funds, they prefer to allow the money to lie idle at the CBN.

I doubt if any of these governors would   leave a dime with the CBN if UBEC decides to cancel all the conditions attached to accessing the money. They are likely to take everything that is available and probably ask for more like Oliver Twist.

It’s time for our leaders to stop being greedy and selfish. They should stop allowing other children to die needless deaths when their own children are safe and well. It doesn’t make sense for them to keep shedding crocodile tears for innocent children that die when they can prevent most of these deaths.

Several countries of the world fund education by a combination of support from the national, state and local tiers of government. Japan, Singapore and other Asian countries spend averagely six per cent of their GDP on education. Public schools are funded by combination of supports from the national, municipal and prefectural governments. This thing works in other places and should work here too.

We’ve had countless reports of school buildings collapsing and killing pupils. The latest was the one that happened in Jos, Plateau State, killing 10 pupils, last week. These are unnecessary deaths. Our governors should therefore as a matter of urgency access available funds to provide a decent environment for Nigerian children to learn.

Education is a basic right of every citizen. Our governors should also be reminded that allowing children to die unnecessarily is murderous. And there is a punishment for shedding innocent blood.

But beyond this, I think the law setting up the UBEC should be reviewed to make it compulsory for states to access their funds within a particular period of time. Any state that fails to do so should be sanctioned. The Federal Government may also give incentives to states that access their funds regularly to encourage others to follow their examples.

Originally published in The Punch