Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) has disclosed that over N71, 044,302, 460.73 billion matching grants are stashed in the Central Bank un-accessed by state governments. Executive Secretary of the Commission, Dr. Hamid Bobboyi, who made the disclosure yesterday in Abuja at interactive session with journalists, said arrangements were in top gear to commence head count of teachers and pupils from the Early Child Care Development (ECCDE) to junior secondary throughout the country.
Bobboyi, who stated that the project tagged: “National Personnel Audit (NPA), would also examine infrastructure for eff ective planning, added that it would also balance data from the sector. “By September, we should have a national sector education planning summit. We held one in Kano and Benin, so we are coming to Abuja to fi ne tune and know the challenges and constraints from each state and the FCT,” he said. He stressed the importanceof data, assuring that personnel audit would aff ord the commission the opportunity of knowing how many teachers and pupils were in the system. “National Population Commission (NPC) and the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) are collaborating with the commission to ensure the success of the national audit,” he said, adding that private schools, whether approved or not, would also be capture in the exercise. On the un-accessed funds, Bobboyi said the amount include N 27, 087, 554, 918, 56 for the 2017 intervention year, which had not been opened for states to access. He explained that as parts of rules and regulations, access to the funds is opened in the fi rst quarter of next year, disclosing, however that some states had already indicated readiness to access the 2017 funds. He commended Borno, Jigawa Katsina, Sokoto Rivers for accessing their intervention funds up to 2016 and to others that had been dilly darling to rise to the challenges of improving on basic education system in their states.
