Mixed reactions trail the 2017 education budget presented on Wednesday by President Muhammadu Buhari to the National Assembly.
Ike Onyechere, the Chairman Exam Ethics Marshal International (EEMI), an NGO, expressed dissatisfaction over the rating of education in the budget.
Onyechere said that education should be top priority of the budget, describing the place ascribed to the sector as unfair.
“The budget is not fair to education at all; it shows that the role of education in terms of rejuvenating the economy has not been recognised and appreciated.
“Else, education should have topped the list. I expected that by now major efforts should be made in investing in the sector.
“When we talk about building infrastructure, there are no well-equipped laboratories in our schools to properly train our graduates, a massive Marshal intervention is absolutely needed in the sector.”
He added that most graduates were incompetent because they are products of the country’s collapsed education system.
However, the Chief Executive Officer, Connected Development (CODE), Hamzat Lawal, extolled the increase in capital expenditure in education from N37 billion in 2016 to N50 billion in 2017.
Lawal, however, noted that increased expenditure does not directly lead to improved performance and service delivery.
According to him, there are several key reforms required in the education sector for such increased expenditure to work.
He noted that transparency and accountability in implementation was crucial.
Lawal said that citizens engagement, which, he said was currently lacking in the polity, was also important in implementation.