Education
Yobe Deposit N2.4bn Counterpart Funds For Basic Education
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Yobe Deposit N2.4bn Counterpart Funds for Basic Education
By Yusuf Ali
Yobe State Government under the administration of Governor Mai Mala Buni CON has lodged the sum of N2.4 billion counterpart fund with the Universal Basic Education Commission UBEC for education revitalisation.
The lodgment of the fund will enable the states to access the yearly disbursement made available by the Federal Government through the Commission for states for the development of basic education.
The fund is deployed to improve the quality of basic education in all 36 states. Each state government is responsible for providing 50 per cent to match the annual disbursement provided by UBEC.
According to the document signed by UBEC’s Director of Finance, Adamu Misau, in response to a Freedom of Information request by human rights lawyer, Femi Falana, (SAN), the states who have lodged their counterpart fund include Jigawa, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Kaduna, Sokoto, Zamfara, Borno, Gombe, Taraba, Yobe, Kogi, Nasarawa, Niger, Plateau, FCT, Ekiti, Lagos, Ondo, Osun, Enugu, Akwa-Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross-River, Delta, Edo, and Rivers states.
It was gathered by Sunday PUNCH that Adamawa and Bauchi states, in a data, jointly failed to access the funds from 2022 (N1.2bn) and 2023 (N1.3bn) respectively.
Benue, Kwara, and Niger states owed an accumulated sum of N2.6bn individually, due to their failure to access the intervention funds in 2022 and 2023.
Kogi, Plateau states, and the FCT presently have N1.3bn each not accessed, which is presently lodged with the commission from the 2023 disbursement.
Ekiti and Lagos states also failed to access the sum of N1.3bn each from the 2023 disbursement.
Further analysis of the data revealed that Ogun State remained one of the highest debtors on the list, having failed to access intervention funds from 2020 to 2023, taking to total amount not accessed by the state to N4.2bn.
The total amount unacessed by states in 2020 stood at N1.4bn; N2.8bn in 2021; N14.4bn in 2022 and N36.1bn in 2023.
