The Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, has called for urgent financial reforms to ensure smooth operations in Nigeria’s 110 Unity Schools. Speaking in Abuja on Wednesday during an official visit by the Accountant General of the Federation (AGF), Mr. Shamsudeen Ogunjimi, Alausa highlighted the urgent need for decentralised financial approvals and quarterly fund releases.
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Dr. Alausa revealed that delays in the release of overhead and school feeding allocations had placed severe financial strain on many Unity Schools. According to him, the last overhead release to the Ministry was in March, and the last school feeding budget was received in April, forcing some schools to operate under difficult conditions.
“We’re going through a rough patch. Principals are under pressure from contractors who are blackmailing them over unpaid contracts. In fact, I had to delay school resumption in some Unity Schools due to fears of insufficient food supply,” Alausa explained.
To address these challenges, the Minister proposed decentralising the financial system so that transactions below N500 million could be approved at the ministry level, while amounts under N100 million could be handled directly by the agencies. He emphasised the need for quarterly releases to allow schools to plan their activities with predictable funding.
The Accountant General of the Federation, Mr. Ogunjimi, acknowledged the issues raised and pledged to prioritise financial releases to the Ministry of Education. He also supported the idea of termly disbursements, asking the Ministry’s Director of Finance and Accounts to submit a formal proposal.
“We will prioritise the releases of overhead to the ministry and make sure that, even if others are not getting it due to funding constraints, the Ministry of Education gets theirs on time,” Ogunjimi assured.
However, Ogunjimi noted that the current bottom-up cash management policy, intended to fast-track budget implementation, has faced operational difficulties due to Nigeria’s fiscal challenges. He revealed that a high-level committee is reviewing the policy and expects to introduce a harmonised version soon.
He further explained that the centralised approval system has overwhelmed the OAGF with a huge volume of documentation from various agencies, causing bureaucratic delays. Ogunjimi agreed with the Minister’s suggestion that smaller contract approvals be handled at the ministry or agency level to reduce system congestion.
“Our capacity has been overstretched because all agencies are required to upload all their documents. We continually have to expand and dig for these documents. Most contracts of lesser value can be handled at the MDA level so we don’t have to populate those documents on our system,” he said.
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