Despite deplorable state of primary schools across the country, N41.06 billion marching grants at the Universal Basic Education Commission are not accessed by state governments, commission’s executive secretary, Hamid Boboyyi, has said.
Bobboyi said this on Thursday during an oversight visit to the Commission by the Senate Committee on Basic and Secondary Education in Abuja.
He said about N143 billion matching grant was accessed by states and FCT from 2017 to 2020, out of the N184.8 billion that was made available by the Commission.
The executive secretary said no state has accessed the 2020 matching grant, he said only Ogun State was yet to access its 2018 allocations while 10 states have not also taken delivery of their 2019 grants as of 8 March, 2020.
He listed the states to include Kebbi, Niger, Ogun, Enugu, Anambra, Ebonyi, Imo, Edo, Abia and Lagos, but added that Abia, Lagos and Kebbi had in a few days lodged their payments.
Bobboyi said UBEC was appropriated 29.7 billion in the 2020 budget for capital projects with N1.3 billion for Federal Teacher Scheme; Constituency Zonal Intervention Projects (ZIP) – N2.8 billion and Constituency projects (Capital) – N25. 6 billion.
He, however, said that only N29. 75 billion (99.2 percent) was released to the Commission as at December 2020.
