Safe School Initiative program designed to fail – Senate President

By Ekwi Ajide

President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan has said that the Safe School Initiative programme in Nigeria is designed to fail.

Speaking at an investigative hearing by Senate joint committee on education-Basic and Secondary and Tertiary Institutions and TETFUND on the utilisation of the funding proposed and budgeted for the Safe Schools Initiative, including monies, supports and donations received from foreign government and agencies, the Senate President said that arrangement which did not factor in the role of the Ministry of Education was not good enough.

The Senate President had been reacting to submissions by the Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Education, Arch. Sonny Echono who said that his ministry played no role in the funding or application of funds meant for the programme as the Federal Ministry of Finance had the control of the funding of the programme to the exclusion of the Education ministry.

Senator Lawan said this programme, Safe School Initiative was designed to fail if it was unnecessarily controlled by the Ministry of finance expressing disappointment that beneficiaries of the programme did not turn up for the hearing.

The Senate President said the investigation was not to look for fault because it is not only limited and restricted to whether someone is not applying all the funds but also to find out how the funds were applied.

Earlier, the Chairman of the joint committee, Senator Ibrahim Gaidam had said the essence of the investigative hearing was to receive factual submissions, inputs and insights on the implementation of the initiative from invited stakeholders.

Gaidam recalled that the Safe School Initiative was launched in 2014 during the World Economic Forum on Africa(WEFA) by the Nigerian government in collaboration with the United Nations in order to rebuild, rehabilitate and restore normalcy in the education sector.