Local Government Autonomy (II): Direct Federal Funding for Basic Education to Local Governments

Today, my lawyers instituted a lawsuit at the Federal High Court in Abuja marked suit number FHC/ABJ/CS/664/2020 seeking the court to enable local governments that are willing and able, to contribute their counterpart funds/matching grants and directly access federal grants for compulsory free universal basic education (UBE) through the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), no longer for these funds to be applied for and administered on their behalf State Universal Basic Education Boards (SUBEBs) when state governments so choose.

The Constitution makes basic (primary and junior secondary) education a core responsibility of the local government. Further to this, the UBE Act 2004 makes local governments the sole enforcers of this compulsory, free, universal basic education law and policy. The law also makes them eligible for federal grants for these purposes.

These funds are, however, according to the UBE Act, only to be accessed, distributed, and administered by state governments through SUBEBs which is an aberration.

However, UBEC has repeatedly cried out that states neglect, fail, or refuse to access the available billions of naira for basic education every year. According to them, as of February this year, N73 billion of the N100 billion available grant for 2019 was unclaimed by the states, as 13.5 million Nigerian children are out of school.

Schoolchildren are seen outdoors under trees sitting on stones or on the bare ground as classrooms are inadequate, unusable, and/or nonexistent in their schools, with no furniture, books, learning materials, and all manner of inefficiencies that culminate in the dysfunctional state of basic education in the country today.

These funds ought to be open to all local governments to access directly, and not to be tied to SUBEBs.

Requiring local governments to access federal grants which are theirs by statute at the mercy of state governments, apart from hampering basic education in Nigeria, also denudes the local government system of its standing as an autonomous tier of government, making them mere administrative units strapped to the apron strings of state governors.

If this lawsuit is successful, local governments shall be able to access funds directly from the federal government for basic education, no longer through SUBEBs. SUBEBs will stop running basic education at the grassroots from state capitals on behalf of the Local Government Education Authorities (LGEAs). The LGEAs shall remain under the supervision of SUBEBs, as they should. This will be a critical step towards local government autonomy, and for our people to feel the impact of governance.

This is the second in our series of public interest litigations towards attaining local government autonomy.

Sesugh Akume
24 June 2020
Abuja

PS
See a copy of the suit below: