Insecurity hampering effective basic education delivery ― UBEC boss

The Executive Secretary of Universal Basic Education Commission, Dr Hamid Bobboyi, said that the attacks on schools and the abduction of students and teachers in some parts of the country have greatly hampered effective basic education delivery in Nigeria.

This is even as the Management of the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS) Kuru, Jos, has commended the Board and Management of UBEC for the progress recorded in the basic education sub-sector despite some of the daunting challenges.

Bobboyi spoke when he received a team of participants of the Senior Executive Course 43, 2021 and some Senior Staff of the National Institute on a study visit to UBEC. The delegation was led by Professor Fatai Aremu.

The Executive Secretary said despite some successes recorded the basic education sub-sector is faced with some challenges like insecurity in some states which slowed down school construction and sometimes result in the destruction of completed projects or abandonment of projects.

A statement by the Head, Public Relations and Protocol of UBEC, Mr David Apeh on Sunday in Abuja, Dr Bobboyi, who was represented by the Deputy Executive Service Secretary (Technical), Dr Bala Zakari, also lamented that parents were engaging their children for economic pursuits such as hawking, child labour, begging and farming thus increasing the rate of out-of-school children and contributing to social menace.

He listed other challenges to include the inability of some states to demonstrate willpower in the provision of adequate budget for running of UBE programme in states, slow accessing of the FGN-UBE matching grants, vandalisation of schools and theft of School facilities and equipment.

Other challenges according to him, included the use of the school as emergency rehabilitation centres such as Internally displaced People’s (IDPs), camps, security camp, inadequate teacher commitment to the profession, the politicisation of basic education in its management administration and supply of data and weak school governance among others.

He, however, noted that in order to provide unfettered access to about 10.1 million out-of-school children in Nigeria, the Commission initiated special intervention programmes designed to address the numerous issues and hard-to-reach school-age population

The initiatives include almajiri programme, special needs learner’s education, boy-child and girl-child programmes, North East basic education reconstruction programme and Open Schooling programme.

Prof. Fatai Aremu, who led the NIPSS delegation said the visit was to enable the participants to interact with relevant members of UBEC Management on the conceptual and theoretical foundation of Policy and Programme Implementation in UBEC.

Other areas of interaction during the study visit include frameworks for policy and programme implementation in UBEC, stakeholders in Policy and programme implementation performance in UBEC, a comprehensive analysis on policy and programme implementation in UBEC, options and strategies among other things.

Aremu said the study focuses on “Strategies for Policy and Programme Implementation in Nigeria” stressing that the Commission was selected as one of the strategic institutions of relevance for the engagement.

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