Group Harps on Multistakeholders Funding for Education

 Group Harps on Multistakeholders Funding for Education – Olugbenga Adebiyi

“The volume of funds available for education to a large extent will determine the quality and quantity of school objective that will be achieved”. This was the view of Mrs. Modupe Onabanjo, chairperson Education Group of Lagos State Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) during a seminar on the “Effect of Low Government Funding on Education in Nigeria” at the LCCI, Alausa last week.

During her welcome address at the seminar, Modupe said, “low government funding in the education sector has severely affected many areas of our lives as education stakeholders. The most challenging recently is the security of school environment, students and teachers at large”.

To solve the problem of paucity of funds in education, she advised that the Federal Government should keep to his promise as vowed in the Education Summit of 2021 in the United Kingdom, through improved planning mechanism and resource allocations, through management of budget and allocation and stakeholders' involvement in education within the community.

Also speaking at the event, Professor Josiah Ajiboye Registrar, Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN) said, when it comes to issue of funding the questions to be asked are: “Is it that there are no funding, poor funding or misappropriation of funds? We need to get this clearly."

Going further, Prof. Ajiboye said overemphasis on Federal Government funding is making things worse in the sense that what the state and local authority are waiting endlessly for federal government intervention for their own state or local projects. He said that the state or local councils are not taking initiative on how to generate funds hence the overreliance on federal government funds or subventions. He said there are many ways the state could generate their own internal revenue without waiting for FG intervention.   

He lamented that Nigerian is not yet there in terms of funding as the UNESCO recommendation of 15-20% recommendation is not being followed. Pointing out that a review of the 2022 budget presented by the National Assembly to the President revealed that out of the ₦16.39 trillion of the total budgets, only ₦1.29 trillion amounting to 7.9 percent was allocated to education.

He also said that a lot of funds are lying fallow with TETFUND and UBEC that are not assessed because there is no political will on the part of the state to assess these funds, saying that the governors are more interested on how they can collect the money without their own counterpart funding not minding that the comatose and deplorable states of education in their states.

The erudite scholar said the major problem has been over-reliance on funding from the federal government allocation without looking at other sources like public-private partnership (PPP), donor agencies, adopt-a-school, individual contributions, stakeholders partnership/funding among other multi-sectoral approach to funding.

Ajiboye said the impact of poor funding has led to consistent ASUU strike, rise in insecurity, increase in tourism education, infrastructural decay, increased number of out-of-school children, poor quality teaching among others. He revealed that about 250 teachers have left the country this year January alone in search of greener pastures abroad. Hence, he advised that the issue should be tackled holistically.

Corroborating Prof. Ajiboye’s assertion, The Managing Director/CEO of EdFin Microfinance Mrs. Bunmi Lawson said that in the good old days community used to the part of schools development and funding of which she benefited a lot.

Lawson said “If the local governments are well-funded, they would be able to take care of the schools in the community”. She concluded that it is because there has been no participation in education that is why schools in the community are not doing well and have become shadow of themselves.

During the plenary session, Mr. Adegbola Adesina, Managing Director CSS Bookshop Lagos said, poor funding has affected the capacity building of teachers who he described as the “single most important factor in the school”.

Adegbola said during the Eko Project, an intervention fund with support from by the World Bank in Lagos State some years ago, teachers have the opportunity to travel abroad for training by the Eko Project but it is no more now.

Also the past president of ANCOPPS Lagos state, Mr. Isaac Olatunde said he applauded the government for providing funding through it has been minimal. He implored the government to do more because there are many areas in critical needs of funding in the education sector. He said without adequate funding, the education sector would not be able to develop a holistic person.

During a question and answer session, one of the participants, Engineer Twinkle Orimanye said Ghana education allocation is 26%, a little better than that of Nigeria. He further said that Nigeria should look more into technical education and ensure that she is not producing half-baked graduates who have nothing to offer saying that an air-conditioner technician in Ghana can also repair fix that of a car whereas the case is different in Nigeria as such person would be said to be a specialist in car alone.

Another participant, Oluwatoyin Camp bell asked how to correct the issue of lack of political will in the area of funding. So as to get funds that are lying fallow into the hands of the state.

At the end of the seminar, the group promised to issue a communiqué with a recommendation to the government on how to address this problem.