Twenty-seven states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory, have failed to access the N36.1bn education fund provided by the Universal Basic Education Commission in 2023.
This is contained in a document prepared by UBEC in March 2024 and signed by it’s Director of Finance and Account, Adamu Misau which showed how state-by-state matching grants were not accessed.
According to the data on the document, Jigawa, Sokoto and Zamfara states in the North-West; Borno and Taraba states in the North-East; Nasarawa State in the North Central; Ondo State in the South-West; Enugu State in the South-East and Delta State in the South-South have fully accessed their funds.
However, the document stated that Kaduna State failed to access the sum of N1.3bn in 2023; Kano State failed to access the sum of N581m in the same year, with Katsina and Kebbi states also failing to access the sum of N1.3bn each in 2023.
Adamawa, Gombe, Yobe and Bauchi states, according to the data, jointly failed to access the funds provided for 2023 (N1.3bn)
But Benue, Kwara and Niger states owed an accumulated sum of N2.6bn, due to their failure to access the intervention funds in 2023.
Kogi, Plateau states and the FCT presently have N1.3bn each not accessed, which is presently lodged with the commission from the 2023 disbursement.
Ekiti and Lagos states also failed to access the sum of N1.3bn each from the 2023 disbursement.
It could be recalled that in February 2024, Human rights lawyer, Mrs Funmi Falana (SAN), dragged the 36 state governments and the FCT before the Federal High Court in Lagos, over their failure to access N68bn UBEC funds to provide free basic education for their citizens.
The senior advocate said the states failed to pay the counterparts funds necessary to access the UBEC funds to provide free basic education for citizens.
Also joined as defendants in the suit were the Attorney-General of the Federation, Lateef Fagbemi (SAN), the Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman (SAN) and UBEC.
The NGF’s Education Advisor, Dr Ebenezer Leo The Great, in a recent interview with newsmen,, disclosed that the UBEC fund was trapped due to the inability of state governments to raise the 50 per cent counterpart of the amount they need.
He added that plans are underway to change the legislation, amend the UBEC Act to reduce the matching grant, that is the counterpart fund that states are supposed to pay to access the fund.
Meanwhile, data from the Commission also revealed that over 47m pupils are currently enrolled in 171,027 private and public primary and junior secondary schools across the country.
UBEC puts the total of public schools at 79,775 while private schools are currently standing at 91,252.
For enrollment, the Commission noted that 7.2m pupils are currently enrolled in Early Childhood facilities with 31.7m enrolled in primary schools while a total of 8m are currently enrolled in Junior Secondary Schools.