Experts in the education sector on Thursday decried the continued show of lack of transparency in the activities of the Tetiary Education Trust Fund (TETfund) and others regulatory bodies which has also affected accountability and poor performance in the sector.
Oluwaseun , Lead partner, BUDGIT foundation, speaking at the press conference on “education funding and transparency” in Abuja said that TETfund as well as other government regulatory bodies are being too secretive and lacks accountability in carrying out their responsibility.
He said “The leadership of the Nigerian education sector lacks the required capacity, TETfund has been inconsistent and lacks transparency in their release of information to the public”.
He explained that the development of the sector rests largely on adequate funding and proper monitoring of the use of funds adding that intervention funds released are often not accessed by states government.
” Education in Nigeria is not given the priority it deserves, the government believes that other sectors need more investment than the education sector, hence the sector has been left to suffer, the sector is also grossly underfunded”.
He said that moving forward, there is need to reverse the trend of education decline, by aligning budgetary allocations with UNESCO standard of allocating 15 percent to 20 percent of the nation’s budget going to education.
” We recommend that federal and state government should jointly prioritize education by creating a soft landing for states to enable access to universal basic education grants as counterpart funding, monthly report of money disbursed by TETfund should also be resuscitated”, he said.
Austin Ekwujuru, representative of the Basic rights watch, decried the activities of the education regulatory bodies stressing that it has hampered the oversight functions of the civil societies as well as other concerns perties in the sector.
“The level of secrecy in the education sector has hampered down the public oversight and the tracking activities of the civil society organization. It is very heartbreaking to see the poor infrastructure in most public schools”.
“Despite calling for scale up of funds for the sector, we also call for accountability in use of the funds from tertiary institutions as well as all institutions responsible for the disbursement of these funds”.
Margaret Lawrence, representative of the public and private development centre (procurement monitoring unit) stressed that education institutions must be compelled to publish and release audit report and financial statements of all revenue including tuition fees, TETfund support, so as to aid the fight against lack of transparency and accountability that besets the sector.
