The Federal Government, through the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), has explained to the private school operators that the ongoing school census exercise at the basic education level across the country has nothing to do with taxation or imposition of levies.
The executive secretary of UBEC, Dr Hamid Bobboyi, made the clarification on Tuesday, in Lagos, at a stakeholders’ meeting with the leadership of various private school associations and the head of teachers in public schools in the state.
The meeting was held in conjunction with the Lagos Universal Basic Education Board (LASUBEB) at its office in Maryland, Ikeja.
Bobboyi said the explanation was necessitated by the attitude of private school owners in the state toward the UBEC state Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) field officers who are deployed to conduct the school census branded as the ‘National Personnel Audit’(NPA), exercise in the state.
The field officers, who had been in the state for some weeks back and also at the meeting with the leadership of private school associations in attendance, reported that private schools had not been granting them access into their premises let alone allow them to do the head count as being done in the public schools.
UBEC boss, who also allowed the private school operators to state their own side of the story, the attitude they claimed was borne out of the fact that government at all levels had never been fair to them in anyway, said the sole objective of the school census is for the benefits of not only the basic education sector at both the public and private circles, but also for the Nigeria’s education system and the economy generally.
He said there would not be genuine government and international donors’ interventions in basic education particularly in a state such as Lagos which has the highest number of private schools and students in the country if there is no accurate, credible and acceptable education data base.
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He said the donor agencies, for example, usually rely on data to offer help when needed, stressing that it is only through reliable statistics that issues such as the huge out-of-school children, and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SGGs) Education for All project, among others, can be meaningfully addressed in the country.
He said it was, however, surprising that public schools in Lagos State are resisting census while their counterparts in other states, including the poorly profiled ones and Arabic schools particularly in the northern part welcome the idea warmly.
He therefore appealed to the leadership of various private schools’ associations to fully support and co-operate with the census officials as they will be going round.
In his own remark, the executive chairman of LASUBEB, Mr Wahab Alawiye-King, reemphasised that the exercise is not meant for taxation purpose.
He said Lagos State could not afford to be left out of possible interventions that may come from the Federal Government and international donors to address challenges in basic education.
He therefore asked the private school owners, who claim to have up to 21 different associations such as National Association of Proprietors of Private Schools(NAPPS), the Association of Formidable Education Development(AFED), League of Muslim Schools Proprietors, among others in Lagos State alone to give their total support and cooperation on the census project.
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