By Noah Ocheni, Lokoja
The Country Director, ActionAid Nigeria, Ene Obi, on Friday
commended President Muhammadu Buhari over his commitment to increase education spending.
In statement issued by ActionAid country Director, Ene Obi and made available to the press, Pointed out that the commendation was sequel to President Buhari’s commitment revealed at the Global Education Summit in London which was co-hosted by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta.
Obi noted that ActionAid Nigeria is looking forward to the next steps and actions to back up the President’s commitment, to address the numerous challenges confronting the education sector.
“Nigeria is a signatory to many international instruments on the delivery of quality education, including the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as such, we expect to see a directive to all relevant government Ministries, Departments and Agencies to prioritize and commence the process of incremental budgeting to actualize the commitment.”
She applauded the commitment responds to the call for Governments to take actions to increase the SHARE of funds allocated to and spent on free, quality, inclusive public education, stressing that it is very critical for the transformation of the sector and will help in placing the country on the path to sustainable education for all.
She noted that, following the trend analysis of the Federal Government Budget by ActionAid Nigeria over the years, the allocation to education has declined relatively.
“Whereas the size of the Federal Government budget has increased since 2016, the allocation to education has been on the decline, although the allocation to education in the overall 2021 FGN budget increased from 5.61% in 2020 to 5.68% in 2021, it was lower than the 7% attained in 2016, 2018 and 2019.” She noted.
“It is no longer news that Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, is home to the highest number of out-of-school children in the world (estimated at around 10.5 million) and evidence has shown that the Covid-19 pandemic and insecurity is increasing this number, hence the commitment of the President couldn’t have come at a better time.”
ActionAid Nigeria, therefore, called on all arms of government to collectively push forward this commitment and ensure that necessary steps are taken to actualize the commitment.
Obi stressed the need for Government to ensure that it works with relevant organizations to enable greater scrutiny of future allocations by publicly publishing education budget and expenditure.
According to president Buhari, the government is to increase education spending by 50% over the next two years and up to 100% by 2025 adding that the objective of the increase is to reach the global benchmark of 20% of public allocation and expenditure to the education sector.
