Education Minister Tasks Govs On ETF

The Minister of Education, Prof. Ruqayyatu Rufai, has emphasised the need for state governors to effectively utilise Education Trust Fund (ETF) to drive education projects in their states.

The minister made the statement at the end of a meeting with the governors, under the aegis of the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF), which ended yesterday in Abuja.

The minister, who spoke with newsmen at the end of the meeting, said that it was

regrettable that majority of the governors did not know how to access the ETF

facilities open to them.

“Most of the governors appear to be blank on the process of accessing the fund,” the minister said.

She, however, expressed optimism that following her meeting with the governors,

the majority of them would begin to access the funds.

The minister added that beyond briefing the governors on how to access the ETF fund, she also used the opportunity to solicit for their continued support in the area of education development in their states.

She added that the ministry was particularly soliciting the support of the

governors because it was planning to carry out a census of schools across

the country.

That, she noted, would require each governor to support its state Ministry of

Education to aid the conduct of a successful school census for the country.

The minister said that the essence of the school census was to compile a statistics

that would ensure a yearly public statistics for the country.

Governor Godswill Akpabio of Akwa-Ibom State, told newsmen that the minister had

helped to clarify the mode of accessing the ETF funds.

“A lot of clarifications had been made on the modalities of accessing the ETF funds

and particularly on the back log that belongs to secondary and primary schools,

which most of the states were guilty of not accessing.

“For the first time, many of the governors now know that most of these projects

really have to emanate from the states and that due process should have been

followed from the states,” Akpabio said.

He, however, attributed the ignorance of the governors to an alleged lack of transparency in the past in terms of information flow, but added that; “things would now be streamlined after the briefing by the minister”.