Worries over FG’s exclusion of UN backed Safe School Initiative in 2024 budget

….UN, World Bank, EU concerned

…..Nigeria may loose millions of dollars support from devp partners, private sectors

Nigeria’s development partners are worried that there are no estimates in the 2024 Budget of the Federal Government for the Safe Schools Initiative established by the FG and a host of international stakeholders in 2014, Empowered Newswire reports.

The Initiative arose against the backdrop of a series of terror
attacks on schools and abduction of pupils in 2014 in Nigeria causing the former British Prime Minister, Mr. Gordon Brown as UN Special Envoy on Global Education and then Finance Minister Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala to float the Initiative which then drew widespread global endorsement.

The Safe Schools Initiative then became concerted effort by the international community and the Nigerian FG to ensure “a protected and safe learning environment” for learners, teachers and others in troubled communities around the country especially in the North.

However inside sources at the Ministry of Budget and National Planning confirmed to Empowered Newswire that the Finance Ministry is responsible for the omission of the Initiative from the 2024 Budget of Renewed Hope.
When contacted officials of the Finance Ministry say the Finance Minister is yet to be convinced of the significance of the Initiative located in the Finance Ministry.

Since the Jonathan administration, the Initiative had been domiciled in the Ministry of Finance and last year the Buhari Administration budgeted a sum of N15B for the Initiative in the 2023 Budget, parts of which have already been released, Budget Ministry officials say.

But UN, World Bank and EU officials in Nigeria are now apprehensive that the 2024 Budget made no allocation at all for the Initiative. Those partners among others are said to be in the process of supporting the Initiative once it is clear that the Nigerian Federal and State governments demonstrate consistent political will and financial commitment.

Already both the FG under the immediate past administration of President Muhammadu Buhari and the development partners have developed a costed implementation plan for the Safe Schools Initiative starting from 2023 to 2026.

In the plan released at the beginning of this year, the former Finance Minister Mrs. Zainab Ahmed had noted that the Safe Schools Financing Plan is the outcome of rigorous consultative engagements with relevant stakeholders at both the national and sub-national levels, including development partners.

While the plan was designed to cover 4 years 2023 to 2026, the total cost came to N144B. The proposal was for the plan to raise N32B in 2023, N36B in 2024, N37B in 2025 and N38B in 2026.

For 2023, the FG under President Buhari approved a contribution of N15B and provided for that in the 2023 Budget. Ahmed then said in the Plan that “this means there is a funding gap of N12B for States, private sector and development partners that may wish to support Nigeria.”

But officials of some of the development partners in Nigeria are worried now that it would be impossible for them to persuade their headquarters to support the Initiative if the FG itself is not going to maintain the political will and financial commitment set by the Buhari Administration.

The plan sets out to commence this year in Very High-Risk States facing threats from Ansarul/ISWAP insurgents/terrorists, Boko Haram inspired bandits and others. Those States are Borno, Yobe, Adamawa, Niger, Kaduna, Zamfara, Katsina, Kebbi, Jigawa, Sokoto, FCT, Plateau, Benue, Taraba, Kogi and Bauchi.

For over a decade according to official FG sources Nigeria has witnessed the deliberate targeting of education with no less than 611 teachers killed, 19000 teachers displaced, an estimated 900,000 children lost access to learning and 75% of children in IDPs not attending schools.