A group, Education Rights Initiative, ERI, has expressed worry over huge sums of money federal government expends annually on supply of textbooks in Basic Education in Nigeria and urged it to stop.
The group, which expressed its position yesterday in Abuja, described the supply of textbooks to Primary and Secondary Schools by the Federal Government through the Universal Basic Education Commission, UBEC, as a waste of public fund.
ERI National Coordinator, Mr. Dickson Itodo, said that over N30 billion has been spent by the Government through UBEC on the supply of books to schools in the last three years without serious impact.
“This waste of public funds should not have happened in the first place or should it have been allowed to go on for so long with over N30 billion down the drain”.
It was recalled that minister of State for Education, Barrister Nyesom Wike, had recently disclosed that since the Federal Government commenced the Free Textbook Initiative in 2010, a total of N52 billion has been expended.
According to him, this included supply of supplementary library and reading materials to primary and secondary schools.
Wike, said a total of 126, 179, 329 textbooks have so far been distributed to schools, saying this has enabled government to achieve 1:1 pupil-textbook ratio as opposed to previous 1:4 ratio.
But Itodo, insists that investigation by the group revealed that some of the textbooks were diverted and never got to some of the schools as stated by the government.