Sunday, February 12, 2012

N73b Basic Education Funds Not Accessed – ETF, UBEC

Leadership
5 February 2012


A whooping sum of N73 billion [$456m] meant for basic education are left untouched in the accounts of two federal government agencies, the Universal Basic education Commission (UBEC) and the Education Trust Fund (ETF) .

This was disclosed by the Minister of Education, Prof. Rukuyyatu Ahmed Rufa’i.

The minister, who was speaking at the one day retreat on President Goodluck Jonathan’s Transformation Agenda for stakeholders in Basic Education sub-sector, noted that following the presidential directives, the unaccessed money had been transferred from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to various commercial banks.

For example, matching grant funds transfer from CBN since 2005 to August 2010 stood at N32, 900, 373,025 billion. Amount received from August 2010 to July 2011 was N23, 484, 048, 706 billion.

Because of Mr. President’s approval to domicile funds with commercial banks the total disbursement to states from August 2010 to July 2011 stood at N25, 750, 857, 012 billion.

Beginning with the states with the highest amount, Ebonyi has N2, 292, 727 billion, Benue N2, 113, 909, 436, Bayelsa N1, 630, 091, 868, while Kano, AkwaIbom and Anambra have N1, 465, 294, 572 each to access.

According to the breakdown, Ogun State has N1, 350, 389, 167, billion while Imo has N1, 228, 972, 951 billion unaccessed fund.

Also giving a breakdown of the ETF unaccessed funds, Executive Secretary ofETF, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu said a total of N27.9 billion was yet to be assessed by the various State Universal Basic Education Boards (SUBEBS), while N15.4billion meant for state ministries of education were not also accessed, bringing it to a total of N43.3 billion.

A breakdown of the backlog according the ETF boss indicated that Anambra,Benue, Niger, Rivers and Imo have over N1 billion each to access. Also 15 ministries have less than a million to access, while Cross River and Sokoto haveN705, 000 and N100, 000 to access respectively.

He noted that the backlog was a result of inability of the ministries and SUBEBS to place their priorities appropriately as well as lack of accountability measures.

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