Nasarawa Gets N3.5bn UBEC Grant For Education Projects

Nasarawa State government has received N3.5 billion matching grant from the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) for the development of basic education in the state.

This was disclosed by Governor Abdullahi Sule during an interface with State Executive Council members in Lafia.

UBEC’s executive secretary, Hajiya Aisha Garba, had announced that the fund was ready for disbursement during a recent visit to the state.

The executive secretary had rated Nasarawa among top performing states in accessing the FGN-UBE matching grants.

She also described as impressive, the way the state was able to utilise grants in developing basic education.

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She disclosed that the federal government through UBEC had so far disbursed over N20bn to the state from 2005 to date.

Governor Sule acknowledged that the state was in receipt of the fund as earlier promised by the executive secretary.

He, however, decried the shoddy manner in which some contractors handled the various SUBEB projects in the state, resulting in substandard works.

He said because of the development, the state government may review the mode of contract awards to ensure quality standard.

“What I am trying to do is to maybe change the mode that we are awarding these contracts. In the past we had given these contracts to several individual contractors and it looked like they would not do the job, they would sell to another contractor who would also sell to another contractor. By the time it gets to the last contractor, all the profits have already been removed and we are not getting the quality work.

“I am becoming very concerned about it. It is one of the items that we should discuss today in order to agree on what needs to be done.

I don’t care if the whole project is given to one big, competent contractor, or maybe two or three competent contractors let them go and fix our schools. We can discuss it and agree,” he stated.