UBEC: Southern States Refuse to Access over N71bn Matching Grant

Ondo, Enugu tops with over N4bn FG earmarks N3bn for North-east school rehabilitation

The Executive Secretary of Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), Mr. Hamid Bobboyi, has blamed most southern states as the most culpable in the over N71 billion unaccessed matching grant from 2005-2017.

To this end, the governors of the affected states have been urged to provide the needed matching funds to ensure proper sourcing of UBE programmes in their respective state.

Bobboyi disclosed this in a data he provided during a media chat with journalists at the UBEC headquarters in Abuja.

He noted that most states in the South particularly South-east and South-west have failed to access their matching funds with Ondo N4, 634 billion; Enugu N4, 209 billion; Oyo, Ogun and Ebonyi N3, 604 billion each; Abia N2, 678 billion and Bayelsa N2,651 billion in that order.

The rest of the southern states owed above N1 billion with Rivers, Akwa Ibom, Cross River and Lagos performing a little better.

Bobboyi said: “No southern state has accessed the fund since 2015,” while Enugu, Ondo, Ogun, Oyo and Ebonyi States have not made significant contributions since 2013.

When asked why the southern states are performing poorly in this regard, the executive secretary gave some number of reasons including the low patronage of public schools as well as prevalence of private and missionary institutions in the affected regions.

However, the UBEC Board called on the governors in the states to ensure that the matching funds are accessed for the overall improvement of education as the resources would be channeled to Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and other related materials.

He also frowned at the demand on the federal government for reduction of counterpart funding, saying if it is reduced, the states will suffer it more.

“If you take the entire amount that is budgeted for UBEC and want to do one thing, may be infrastructure, it may take you more than five years or so to constitute 10 per cent of the needs of the states,” he said.

Bobboyi stressed that “the matching grant is a system developed to have a comfortable resource for education at the state level.

“The argument is that states will suffer significantly if these funds are not accessed.”

He noted that most northern states have been able to match and access their UBEC grants led by North-west, North-east and North-central in that order.

In 12 years, starting from 2005 till 2017, about N372 billion has been released as matching grants to states and N301 billion has been disbursed so far with about N72 billion unaccessed.

Explaining, the Executive Secretary said it would not be possible to access the 2017 grant until the first quarter of 2018, and as a result, most states have withheld their counterpart/ matching funds.

In the North-east, Bobboyi noted that the region’s education has suffered tremendously from the Boko Haram-led insurgency with destruction of schools and disruption of learning.

Against this backdrop, UBEC has earmarked the sum of N3 billion for the rehabilitation of education sector in the region.

He also said that the fund will be used to target certain key infrastructural development for education, support women who left school during insurgency with further education or skills, rehabilitation of class rooms, retraining of teachers and provision of teaching and learning materials as well as ICTs.