Spokesman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, has said that the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) has in the last 12 years disbursed the sum of N800 billion to states of the federation.
The former Commissioner for Education in Kwara State added that the commission disbursed a princely sum of N22 billion to each state in Nigeria between 2000 and 2012, wondering why many of the states did not make judicious use of the funds.
The former Minister of Youths and Sports said this in Ilorin at a public lecture organised by the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) on basic education in Nigeria.
Mallam Abdullahi, who said that primary education was the only way to measure standard of education, added that once the basic education was faulty, all other steps could be wrong.
Said he: “The message is this: Nigeria has to rethink its entire education system if we want to get a kind of result that we believe can put us in same pedestal with rest of the world.
“And we have to start by acknowledging that much of what we are doing at the moment is not working. And that’s not just about funding, even as important as that is.
“The entire education architecture needs to be overhauled, and that’s right from basic education. And one key thing that I said struck even me is that we cannot continue to leave the most important tier of our education in the weakest tier of government, and that’s basic education in the hands of local government.
“So, as we begin to consider the autonomy of the local government, it’s important for us to begin to ask what implication that would have for basic education.”
He said that Nigerians should ask what the money meant for basic education had been spent on so far, adding that they should also care to know who had been doing the spending.