Five Northern States to Benefit from $100m GPE Grant for Education

Paul Obi in Abuja

As part of efforts to combat poor performance of some northern states in education, five states from the North-west geo-political zone are to benefit from a $100 million grant supported by the Global Partnership for Education (GPE).

The grant is expected to bring relief to funding of education programmes in the North-west, where indexes on education appears to be at the lowest ebb compared to other regions.
The $100 million grant from the Global Partnership on Education (GPE) is also geared towards shoring up basic education in the region.

The Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, who made this known in Abuja yesterday during the launch of the Nigerian Partnership for Education Project (NIPEP), explained that the money would be used to scale up basic education, with emphasis on the girl-child in the five focal states.

Adamu, who was represented by Minister of State for Education, Prof. Anthony Anwukah, named the benefiting states to include Kano, Katsina, Kaduna, Jigawa and Sokoto, stating that the grant, which is the GPE intervention in Nigeria, targeted states because of the high number of out-of-school children in the zone.

“The North-west geo-political zone has the highest number of out-of-school children even before the activities of insurgents compounded the problem with the spillover from the North-east,” Adamu said.

The minister tasked the benefiting states to utilise the fund transparently in line with the anti-corruption stance of the President Muhammadu Buhari’s government.

He reiterated the administration commitment to provide quality education to all children across the country.
Also, the World Bank Specialist in Nigeria, Tunde Adekola, said the GPE, which was put in place in 2002 by member states of the United Nations, channels donations made by international bodies and philanthropists to support educational development.

Further, Sokoto State Governor, Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, who spoke on behalf of the benefiting states, pledged that “enabling environment would be provided for the utilisation of the grants to achieve the desired results.”
Tambuwal assured the gathering of the benefiting states’ commitment to ensure that the grant meets the expectations and aspirations it was meant to achieve.