Kano State government has said it is ready to access all the accumulated funds from the Education Trust Fund (ETF) estimated at N2.5 billion with a view to uplifting the education sector in the state.
Governor of the state, Engr. Rabiu Kwankwaso, who was at the ETF office in Abuja yesterday acknowledged that the condition of education in his state was at a low ebb, and said efforts were on to develop more infrastructure to ensure more children get enrolled into the primary and basic schools, which in turn will cut down on the almajirai syndrome.
He said that the state was bedeviled by acute shortage of classrooms and other facilities that enhance learning, and noted that his coming back to Government House would herald a new wind of change to improve the lot of the poor as far as education was concerned.
“Kano is a very populous state and has serious challenges in the education sector. We did a lot of things like the free feeding to encourage pupils to remain in school when I was the governor between 1999 and 2003. We had about 170 pupils in a class, and even now we still find that the number is 120 and some 130 per class.
“Now that we are back, expectations are high. We inherited so many backlogs. Kano was not able to access a lot of the intervention funds and that is the reason we have come to the ETF so we can get back on track. We are going to continue with the school feeding programme, but we are waiting for the report on the population of pupils so we can know the number we are working on.
On his part, the ETF executive secretary, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, told the governor that the agency did not derive any joy if states fail to access allocated the funds. He noted that Kano had a backlog of N1.2 billion unaccessed fund for the Universal Basic Education (UBE) while another N1.3 billion was for the state ministry of education as well as the tertiary education sector.
He noted that ETF did not require any counterpart funding as a requirement for accessing the funds, but said the states must account for all the accessed funds before they could get any other fund. He urged the governor to hasten up and get the money to salvage the sector in state.?
