By Uche Aguoru
Abia State Universal Basic Education Board, (ASUBEB) recently received the sum of 6 billion naira from Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), these funding was meant to facilitate successful implementation of UNIVERSAL BASIC EDUCATION (UBE) projects, with the primary aim of ensuring that all Abia children receive basic education in a conducive and comfortable educational environment that will enhance learning as designed by UBEC and implemented across the federation.
It therefore becomes nonsensical, ill-advised and a poorly thought-out policy for a government that inherited in approximation of 573 primary schools, across the 17 LGA,s with 85% percent of the schools in a ramshackle condition that can easily pass for a pigsty than an educational environment, with leaking roofs, caved in and torn ceilings, no seats and no learning materials, with 92% of the schools not having decent toilets, urinary and potable water, exposing the teachers and their pupils into the dangerous and unhealthy habit of having to turn the nearest bush into their place of convenience, in some of the schools, some classes does not have black boards, while 98% of the schools does not have perimeter fences exposing the students and their teachers to unimaginable insecurity in todays Abia where kidnapping, herdsmen incursion and other forms of criminality have become a part of our everyday existence that it no longer make headline news, it is a goof that a government with good knowledge of its educational environment will embark on the construction of only 4 new school facilities with 65% of the 6 billion naira and reconstruction of 132 class room blocks only as against over 573 primary schools scattered across Abia state with the money accrued to the statethrough ASUBEB by UBEC neglecting the larger component of educational facility across the state unattended to.
For governor Okezie Ikpeazu PhD, a supposed scholar and one who had dwelled and earned a living through the educational sector to have neglected the state of degenerate infrastructure across the existing educational facilities as we have it in Abia today, only to embark on the proposed construction of additional 4 schools, using his exact language (quote) Model Schools, calls for questioning as to the real intentions of the governor bearing in mind that statistics has proved that Abia currently housing over 573 primary schools is not experiencing shortfalls in number of schools.
A prudent, responsible and transparent administration would have made sure that the funds so secured are utilized properly by ensuring that the funds are fully injected into reconstruction, re-equipping and repairing of the existing school facilities with the knowledge that 98 percent of our primary and secondary schools are in dire need of repairs across the state unless the government wants to prove right the assertion that most of the companies that got the ASUBEB 6 billion naira contract are inexistent and was hurriedly setup by high profile government officials for the primary purpose of securing this contract with no intention of executing it.
In as much as I am not against the construction of new schools be it MODEL or REGULAR but I am of the opinion that given the dilapidated state of schools in Abia, it will be a great disservice and not a well-meaning policy to embark on the construction of new schools when the already existing schools are begging for repairs unless the government wants to use the construction of the new schools as a straw designed to drain the funds into private accounts as usual.
These types of phantom projects that hardly gets completed has become common knowledge since the coming of Ikpeazu administration, and has created an air of suspicion that such unrealistic projects are being created for ease of plundering funds meant for the development of critical areas of the states infrastructure and economy, a thinking governor would have known that it will benefit the state and the educational sector more, if all the schools across Abia are renovated and equipped it will advance education more, than to embark on the construction of new schools that Abians are even 75% sure that it won’t be completed
Aguoru
Writes from Umuahia
