Enugu education budget up 74% to N12.26bn in 2021
STATE IN THE SOUTHEAST geopolitical zone, raised its budget allocation to education sector to over N12.26 billion in the current 2021 state Appropriation Act, an amount that is about 74 percent above last year’s N7.04 billion, David Okelue Ugwunta, state commissioner of budget and planning told journalists at a budget breakdown in Enugu, the capital.
Uche Eze, his education counterpart, corroborated the sectoral increase by further saying that the new allocation is meant to take proper care of all the educational institutions in the state, as well as enhance the standard of learning and education in the state.
Enugu, is a tier-1 Nigerian subnational with a GDP size of over $5.86 billion, according to a 2016 survey where it placed 25 out of the 36 states. The hilly state, which is rich in, yet unexploited, coal deposits, has ample educational institument’s tions, including a first-generation federal university at Nsukka, a state varsity of science and technology (ESUT), several other public and private varsities, polytechnics, colleges of education, including the newly established Enugu University of Education (EUoE) at Ihe in Awgu local council of the state. It was established by incumbent governor, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi.
However, the government surprisingly left out the EUoE from the 2021 education sector budgetary allocation, which is the second time in two successive budgets. In 2020, it was left out of the budget allocation on the caveat that it was about to begin construction.
For example, in the 2021 budget, the Enugu State Universal Basic Education Board (ESUBEB) got a princely allocation of N8 billion followed by the State Polytechnic at Iwollo, while ESUT got N517.25 million.
The absence of the EUoE from the state’s education budgets of 2020 and 2021 has raised serious doubts among the academia and educationists about the government’s sincerity in establishing the institution as a full-fledged university of education.
Some academics have questioned if the government wasn’t only intending to make the facility end up as a faculty of education in the existing ESUT (Enugu State University of Science and Technology) which has been in existence since about 1983.