Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed says with an estimated 13 million children currently out of school in Nigeria, the country is sitting on the precipice of a socio-economic disaster if nothing is done to reverse the trend.
Ahmed said on Tuesday it has become imperative for relevant stakeholders in the education sector to work in a coordinated manner to stop the current wave of systematic attacks on the fundamental rights of children to a safe learning environment.
The minister spoke at a dialogue tagged “Financing safe schools: Creating safe learning communities”, in Abuja.
Noting that Nigeria already accounted for approximately 20 percent of the global out-of-school population, Ahmed regretted that the COVID-19 pandemic has deepened insecurity across the country and resulted in an alarming spate of school attacks and mass kidnapping.
“These actions are a direct attack on our children’s fundamental human rights to “an education without fear of violence or attack,” as described in the Safe Schools Declaration, to which Nigeria is a signatory. In fact, we were among the first 37 United Nations member states to “endorse” the Declaration.
“Parents are increasingly more nervous about sending their children and particularly their young girls to school, with some choosing to withdraw existing students. The time to act is now” the minister urged.
According to Ahmed, the dialogue recognises the need for decisive action and for a coordinated approach to the financing and implementation of an integrated Safe Schools programme across the country, tailored to the current realities on ground.
The minister further pointed out that financing was critical to the successful implementation of any proposed interventions that come out of the dialogue.
“We in government recognise that to make the critical investments necessary to secure our schools and ensure a holistic and community-centered approach to Safe Schools programmes, we must address the longstanding challenge of domestic revenue mobilisation. This process is already ongoing through the implementation of fiscal reforms, including Finance Acts 2019 and 2020”, she informed.
Ahmed further stated that the government was working to develop the second phase of the Strategic Revenue Generation Initiatives (SRGI), a multiagency programme originally launched in 2019, with prioritised initiatives across three thematic areas to include: achieving sustainability in revenue generation, identifying new and enhancing enforcement of existing revenue streams, and achieving cohesion in the revenue ecosystem (people and tools).
“As part of this initiative, we are also exploring how to make our revenue administration processes more efficient, recognising resource constraints particularly post COVID-19.
Even with the aforementioned efforts, our fiscal space remains constrained with the COVID-19 response having required increased borrowing in Nigeria, as it has in other countries across the globe”, the minister added.
She again urged the government, the private sector and international development partners to work collaboratively in developing funding strategies to drive the creation of safe education environments.
“Today is an opportunity for us to come together to renew and reimagine our country’s commitment to ensuring safe schools for our children. This process must be government-led – it must be strategic, and it must result in a multi-stakeholder framework and plan of action that ensures that any planning we do today is sustainably financed”, Ahmed said.
