By Gabriel Dike
Worried by the slow pace of the conduct of National Personnel Audit (NPA) also known as school census in Lagos State, top officials of the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) on Tuesday met with key stakeholders to seek their support in the success of the exercise.
The management of UBEC lead by the Chairman, Board of Trustees (BoT), Prof. Adamu Kyauka, the Executive Secretary of the commission, Dr. Hamid Bobboyi and senior officials of UBEC were on fact-finding mission in Lagos and met with stakeholders on how to address the attitude of some private schools refusal to allow numerators access into their schools.
The crucial meeting involved the National Association of Proprietors of Private Schools (NAPPS), Association for Formidable Education Development (AFED), Muslim School Proprietors Association (MUSPASS), UBEC field officers and senior officials of Lagos State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB).
The UBEC Act 2004 empowers the commission with the support of states and local governments to carry out regular personnel audit of teachers and non-teaching staff of basic schools in the country to gather data for basic education data bank.
According to records, the commission conducted the National Personnel Audit (NPA) exercise in 2006, 2010, 2018 and revalidated in 2019.
In his report, the 2022 NPA Team Leader, Mr. Alabi Asaju, said despite series of meetings with stakeholders, private schools in the state are not cooperating with UBEC officials on the exercise.
Asaju disclosed that private school owners denied UBEC field officers access to their schools to conduct the numeration.
He said 177 UBEC staff were posted to Lagos for the exercise in about 28,000 public and private schools.
Other field officers corroborated his position and stressed that the private schools thought the exercise is meant to increase taxation.
The SUBEB chairman, Mr. Wahab Alawiye-King, said in the last exercise Lagos State didn’t do well because private schools did not cooperate with UBEC field officers.
He stressed the need to collaborate with the private schools to conduct the NPA and reduce the out-of-school children in the state.
NAPPS Deputy President, Dr. Comfort Otegbeye, acknowledged that members did not allow UBEC field officers into their schools because members thought the collection of data was meant to increase taxation.
AFED President, Mr. Orji Emmanuel, said stakeholders were not carried along in the ongoing exercise and that his members participated in the 2018 and 2019 exercise.
In his response, the Executive Secretary of UBEC, Dr. Hamid Bobboyi,  said the interaction with stakeholders in Lagos became necessary because of its unique position in terms of large number of private schools, teachers, non-teaching and pupils.
Bobboyi said the data collection is in the interest of public and private schools, adding the school census is backed by law.
He appealed to the various private schools in the state to educate their members on the importance of the NPA and the benefits from the Federal Government and the World Bank Interventions programme which Kano State got $25millon recently.