IDLE UBEC FUND AND MATTERS ARISING States should assist children’s education by accessing the funds in their back yard The revelation that more than N267 billion in released basic education intervention funds remained unspent as of States should assist children’s education by accessing the funds in their back yard The revelation that more than N267 billion in released basic education intervention funds remained unspent as of August 2026 should concern all stakeholders in the country, especially at a period when millions of children are not in school.
According to the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) Executive Secretary, Dr Aisha Garba, such a huge sum of unutilised funds underscores the need for a fundamental shift in how some states plan, budget and spend money allocated to basic education.
What the governors and other stakeholders must understand is that the hundreds of billions of Naira that are trapped within UBEC are not merely unspent funds; they reflect a country whose leaders care little about the future of its children.
For almost two decades, the commission has been reporting unaccessed funds earmarked for universal basic education (UBE)—N50 billion in 2010, N80.9 billion in 2015, and N263 billion as of December 2024.
At present about nine states are yet to fully draw down the intervention funds due to failure to provide the counterpart funding. This is also due partly to structural defect: a framework that subordinates the 774 local governments to state executives, reducing a constitutionally recognised third tier to administrative dependency. In a bid to help the Nigerian child access good education, especially at the foundation level, the federal government established the UBEC in 1999. Its mandate is to administer a fund to all the 36 states of the federation as part of measures to standardise primary education.
MSEApp News is publishing an original rewrite of this tip for readers, based on reporting associated with THISDAY.