By Okeoghene Akubuike
The Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) says it will soon release the data of the National Personnel Audit of Nigeria’s public and private basic education institutions.
UBEC’s Executive Secretary, Dr Hamid Bobboyi, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Thursday that some challenges encountered in collating the data in some states were responsible for the delay in releasing the data.
We have achieved quite a tremendous success in terms of gathering data, but we also faced serious challenges; the number of private schools we have encountered in some parts of the country was quite unexpected and unprecedented.
“For example in Lagos, Oyo and Rivers states and other places; it was so overwhelming, even some of the state governments have got no idea about the total number of private schools they have.
“But again, we are doing this is to understand where our children are schooling.
“The second challenge has also been the fact that many of the private schools were a bit reluctant in cooperating with us initially, they felt that we were coming for the purpose of taxation and for other things.
“All these created a real problem for us and we had to now go into full advocacy to gain access into schools to collect the kind of data that we require to help in effective planning for its basic education sector.
“And I think we have gone very far now.
“For the analysis of the data again we have to wait until we can get all those figures, but we hope in the next two months, we will finish the entire processing of the data.’’
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NAN reports that the national personnel audit which was launched by the Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu on April 30, covers all pupils, students and personnel in both public and private basic education institutions nationwide.
He said that the exercise revealed the role the private sector played in basic education citing Lagos as an example, saying that 65 per cent of schools were owned by private providers.
The executive secretary spoke of the need to ensure that educational institutions in both the private and public sectors were working towards ensuring quality basic education in the country.
Bobboyi , who said that lack of data was a major setback in the education sector, added that the audit would help create a comprehensive and reliable basic education data bank in the country.
He said: “We had a partnership with the National Space Research and Development Agency to help us with the process of school mapping to get the GPS of every school.
“Through that we get the data of every teacher, the pupils within the school and the infrastructure within that system.’’
NAN reports that the commission has, since inception, only carried out personnel audit of all public basic education institutions in the country twice – in 2006 and 2010.
The 2018 personnel audio was held in May and June for schools in the Southern and Northern states.
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