ActionAid Nigeria has commended President Muhammadu Buhari on his commitment to increase education spending by 50 per cent over the next two years and up to 100 per cent by 2025.
This was contained in a statement by the country director, ActionAid Nigeria, Mrs. Ene Obi, in Lagos Friday.
Obi said that the increase was in tandem with the objective to reach the global benchmark of 20 per cent of public allocation and expenditure to education.
She noted that Buhari made the commitment at the Global Education Summit in London which was co-hosted by the UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, and Kenyan President, Uhuru Kenyatta.
According to her, ActionAid is looking forward to the next steps and actions to back up the president’s commitment to address the numerous challenges confronting the education sector.
She said Nigeria was a signatory to many international instruments on the delivery of quality education, including the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
“As such, we expect to see a directive to all relevant government Ministries, Departments and Agencies to prioritise and commence the process of incremental budgeting to actualise the commitment.
“We are particularly delighted that the commitment responds to the call for Governments to take actions to increase the share of funds allocated to and spent on free, quality, inclusive public education. This is very critical for the transformation of the sector and will help in placing the country on the path to sustainable education for all,” Obi said.
She said available records show that Nigeria is home to the highest number of out-of-school children in the world (estimated at around 10.5 million).
Obi urged all arms of the government to collectively push forward this commitment and ensure that necessary steps were taken to actualise it.
She appealed to the government to work with relevant organisations to enable greater scrutiny of future allocations by publicly publishing education budget and expenditure.
“We want to encourage that there has to be quality provision of gender responsive public service facilities in all schools,” she said.
(NAN)
