The FCT Administration revealed that it committed a total sum of $1,045,176,470 billion approximately N177B for the development of infrastructures in the education sector.
This, the FCTA said was in inclusive of the N3,500,000,000.00 billion counterpart funding from Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), bringing the total commitment of infrastructural development to approximately N177,,000,000,000.00 billion.
Minister of State FCT, Dr. Mariya Mahmoud, stated this at the sixth International Conference on Learning Cities held in Jubail industrial city, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Mahmoud, who represented FCT Minister, Barrister Nyesom Wike at the event, noted that Abuja’s annual budget for the development of education has surpassed the UNESCO benchmark of 26 per cent.
According to the SA Media To FCT Minister of State, Austine Elemue, added that highlighting further the total investment in different sectors of education, Wike said a total of 21 primary and junior secondary schools were renovated completely, while a total of 30 senior secondary schools were also established.
Other area of infrastructural investment according to the Minister, include the tertiary education sector, adding that the FCT Administration has committed the sum of N14,529,622,993 billion for the completion and launch of FCT University, Abaji.
“UNESCO generally recommends that member nations have a budgetary allocation benchmark of at least 26 per cent to education.
“This benchmark is intended to ensure that countries can adequately address needs of their education system such as teachers, training, infrastructure development and educational technology.
“It might interest my audience to know that Abuja’s annual budget for education surpasses the UNESCO benchmark”, the minister stated.
The minister reiterated that the city under the current watch has invested heavily in the training and retraining of teachers and educational infrastructure in the six area councils of the territory.
It could be recalled that the sixth International Conference on Learning Cities (ICLC 6) focuses on strategies to promote climate action through lifelong learning. The conference’s theme is “Learning cities at the forefront of climate action”.
The conference brought together representatives from UNESCO learning cities, policy-makers, educators, researchers, and other stakeholders.
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