House of Representatives Committee on Basic Education has commended the Edo State Government for the judicious utilisation of the Universal Basic Education (UBEC), funds.
Team Leader of the House Committee, Hon Istifanus Gyang, who led other members on tour of schools in the state, said they were in the state as part of their legislative oversight functions to assess the level of utilisation of the grant accessed.
He described the state’s performance over the years as commendable. “We have been able to go round parts of the state and what we saw on ground is quite commendable,” the lawmaker said.
He however revealed that, “many states have not accessed the UBEC grant for many years now and Edo is one of them. What is due Edo is about N3.1billion on paying of counterpart funds and with that, a lot can still be achieved in the state. We want Edo State to take advantage of this available grant.”
Gyang who described physical infrastructure and teachers in the education sector as hardware and software respectively tasked the state government and the SUBEB to do more in the area of human capital development, especially in the training and retraining of teachers to complement the state government’s infrastructural development in the education sector which is rated high.
The deputy governor, Philip Shaibu. who received the committee on behalf of Governor Godwin Obaseki, assured that government was already working on accessing the grant.
He assured that the present administration will remain transparent in handling UBEC funds while also seeking the National Assembly’s cooperation in that regard.
