US donates $2m to Nigeria’s Safe Schools Initiative

The United States on Thursday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Federal Government to contribute $2 million to Nigeria’s Safe Schools Initiative (SSI) set up to meet the education needs of thousands of children affected by ongoing conflict in the country’s North East region.

The US donation will go into a Multi Donor Trust Fund (MTDF), a separate account set up within the United Nations system through Gordon Brown’s efforts to support the initiative and will operate alongside the earlier Trust Fund set up by the Federal Government. The Qatar government has already made a $2 million contribution into the MTDF, which recently became operational and is being managed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), UNICEF and UNOPS. The MTDF will harness donations from other governments’ donor agencies, inter- national non-governmental organisations and global corporate, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, coordinating minister for the economy and minister of finance, said yesterday.

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The fund will therefore co-finance projects and programmes of the SSI alongside the Nigerian fund, the minister stated. School enrolment rates in Northern Nigeria are already among the lowest in the country–frequent attacks by the Boko Haram insurgents and the abduction of school children have discouraged many families in the region from sending their daughters, particularly, to school.

The Safe Schools Initiative was set up since mid last year launch by President Jonathan and Gordon Brown, UN special envoy on education and former UK Prime Minister to bridge this gap and encourage enrolment. The initiative specifically manages school-based interventions, such as improvement or refurbishment of infrastructure and furnishings, provision of teaching and learning materials, com- munity-based preventive planning and support for double shift scheduling to accommodate more students.

Since the launch, the Nigerian government has tried to build strong partnerships with governments, donor agencies, and the private sectors to pool together funds and technical capacity that will enable the SSI succeed. The Federal Government set up an initial trust fund domiciled at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) into which it paid $10 million (N1.6 billion at the time). There was also an immediate $10 million pledge by a coalition of Nigerian business leaders to the fund.