Group advocates sanctions for states not accessing UBEC grant

By Mashe Umaru Gwamna

A Non-governmental Organisation, Human Development Initiatives (HDI), has advocated sanctions for states which refuse to access the Universal Basic Education Board (UBEC) marching grants.
To this end, the group rooted that such grants that were not accessed by the erring states, should be forfeited.
The HDI’s Research Programme Officer, Olayemi Samuel, who spoke in Abuja yesterday at a sensitizing workshop for community stakeholders in basic education, also called on the state Universal Basic Education Boards to publicise their action plans.
He said: “We are talking about mandating the state Universal Basic Education Boards to access the UBEC marching grants but even with that, there should be sanctions so that they can be able to access the action plan, in order for them not to forfeit the funds allocated to them.
“Right now, as we are talking, the money is laying there at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), because the state governments are not providing their own counterpart funding, so there is no way they can access the fund.
“There is the need for them to publicize their action plan and put their educational action plan on their website for citizens to access them to know their current action plan”, he said.
Samuel, who is a Leader Facilitator with HDI, also identified lack of political will as some of the problems militating against proper monitoring of funds allocated for UBEC projects in the country.
“The major problem is lack of political will, but the federal government has done its part by committing two percent of its revenue in the implementation of Universal Basic Education Board (UBEC), but even with that, most states are yet to withdraw the UBEC marching grants.
“The state government needs to pay more attention to the infrastructure across the school. Basic education is the foundation upon which other education is built. It is important for them to actually see to it proper implementation”, he added.