ISSUES IN UBEC IDLE FUNDS
State governors should pay attention to primary education
In a bid to help the Nigerian child access good education, especially at the foundation level, the federal government established an intervention body, the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) in 1999. Its mandate is to administer a fund to all the 36 states of the federation as part of measures to standardise primary education. Unfortunately, authorities in no fewer than 29 states have chosen to imperil the future of children by refusing to access the grants that has accumulated to the tune of N68.73 billion. This is simply because they do not want to be accountable. “Between 2019 and 2022, the sum of N162.28 billion was allocated to states as UBEC grants, but only 11 states have accessed the matching grant,” executive secretary, Hamid Boboyi, recently told the Senate committee on basic education.
The UBEC fund is an annual grant by the federal government to help the states upgrade their primary education facilities to provide a good educational foundation for the nation’s children. To access the fund, state governments are required to match the federal government’s grant strictly for primary education expenditure. But many of the states have ignored this facility even as children study under very deplorable conditions, including having lessons under trees and dilapidated classrooms while the quality of teachers remain suspect in many cases. In these lean times, it is unfortunate that many state governors have not realised the importance of the facility intended to secure a solid foundation for the future of their children. Indeed, records abound of reckless and frivolous expenditures by the states, despite the difficulties in meeting their basic responsibilities, even in the primary education sector.
Ordinarily, primary education does not fall within the purview of the federal government and the two per cent of the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF) it set aside for equal distribution to the states and Federal Capital Territory (FCT), to support basic education was a response to a felt national need. While this intervention fund is not supposed to be the main or alternative fund for that critical education sub-sector, many state governments speak about it with a sense of entitlement. Interestingly, the states complaining of inadequate funds to rebuild classroom, train teachers and provide instructional materials are the ones putting forward all sorts of arguments against rules for access to the special intervention funds.
For years, many of the governors had been scheming to collect this special federal government intervention fund without providing the necessary counterpart funding, which is a needed demonstration of seriousness for entitlement. In 2014, the governors made spirited efforts to amend Sections 9 (b) and 11(2) of the UBEC Act that spell out criteria for entitlement to the funds. Specifically, the governors wanted to collect the intervention fund without providing the necessary counterpart funding. The Goodluck Jonathan administration resisted the amendment because of the poor handling of the funds by most state governments, which reinforced the need for strict monitoring of its disbursement and utilisation.
Allocation has hardly ever gone beyond half a billion naira per state, per annum. Yet some states argue that this is too much for them to commit as counterpart fund. The Femi Falana-led Alliance on Surviving Covid-19 and Beyond (ASCAB) wants UBEC to directly disburse the money but their prescription offers no practical solution. There must be effective monitoring of the projects executed with the funds as there have been cases of classrooms falling apart even before they are used. While the school-based management committees (SBMCs) have a role to play, governors must understand that by shunning UBEC because of counterpart funding they are fighting a commitment to transparency and accountability to the people whose interests they have sworn to protect.
