Pupils in 50% of schools in Nigeria sit on bare floors — UBEC

The Executive Secretary, Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), Hamid Bobboyi, has revealed that over 50 per cent of pupils in Nigeria are forced to sit on the floor due to a lack of furniture. According to him, the emerging constraints in basic education delivery may necessitate an increase in the consolidated revenue funds from the current two percent to four percent.

Bobboyi made the disclosure at a one-day Civil Society Organisations CSO-Legislative Round Table Meeting on Tuesday in Abuja. Some National and State Houses of Assembly members were in attendance. Stressing the enormity of challenges in the basic education subsector, he appealed to the Executive and Legislative arms of government to consider a review of the consolidated revenue funds from the current two percent to four percent. The UBEC chief added that the security challenges facing the country are fast expanding to schools and that the rising student population also poses an urgent need for teaching facilities.

He said: “While the children of the rich who are merely 20 percent of the population can afford to garner resources for private schools, the less privileged constituting 80 percent are stuck with the public institutions.” Bobboyi urged civil society organisations, the media, and other critical stakeholders to help the government to bridge the gaps in learning and teaching processes, especially at the basic school level. Chairman, Senate Committee on Basic Education, represented by Senator Frank Ibiziem, decried the failure of the State Universal Basic Education (SUBEB) to sustain some UBEC- initiated projects such as Classroom Libraries earlier introduced by the commission in all constituencies. While commending UBEC for the construction of classrooms, he lamented the poor maintenance culture, noting that there is no school in the country that does not have a dilapidated block.

He called for a rapid response initiative to commence repairs of dilapidated schools and pledged the Senate’s support for any move by the commission towards ensuring the provision of a good learning environment for students. A representative of MacArthur Foundation, Mr Dayo Olaoye, called on stakeholders to review the impact of the country’s annual budget on education, stressing that it was not enough that Nigeria is increasing its budget for the sector. “As we think about reforms, let us think beyond buildings that have been delivered, let us start thinking about how many children have been brought to school,” he said. He emphasized the need for accountability in the educational sector, noting that in addition to vertical accountability, there was a need to entrench horizontal accountability whereby the office of the accountant general strengthened other accounting offices to ensure transparency in the sector. (New Telegraph: Excludes headline)