Senate President Ahmad Lawan, has said that the Safe School Initiative programme in Nigeria is designed to fail.
Speaking at an investigative hearing by the Senate Joint Committee on Education on the utilisation of the funds proposed and budgeted for the Safe Schools Initiative, including monies, supports and donations received from foreign government and agencies, the Senate President said arrangement, which did not factor in the role of the Ministry of Education, was not good enough.
Ekwi Ajide of ABS, Abuja Bureau, reports that the Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Education, Architect Sonny Echono, had earlier informed the Committee that the Ministry played no role in funding or applying for funds meant for the programme, stating that the Finance counterpart had the control of the funding of the programme to the exclusion of the Education ministry.
Senator Lawan, who said that the programme was designed to fail if it was unnecessarily controlled by the Finance Ministry, expressed disappointment that beneficiaries of the programme did not turn up for the hearing.
Earlier, the Chairman of the Joint Committee, Senator Ibrahim Gaidam, said the essence of the investigative hearing was to receive factual submissions, inputs and insights on the implementation of the initiative from invited stakeholders.
Senator Gaidam recalled that the Safe School Initiative programme was launched in 2014 during the World Economic Forum on Africa by the Nigerian Government, in collaboration with the United Nations, in order to rebuild, rehabilitate and restore normalcy in the education sector.