While Unity Schools principals budget millions yearly for perimeter fencing they are building in the sky, their supervising department remains the pillar behind the imaginary walls.

Last November, former Education Minister Adamu Adamu made a dash to flaunt the accountability of his ministry and President Muhammadu Buhari administration. He gave a lowdown of the N7bn the ministry spent on beefing up security infrastructure in 104 federal government colleges across the nation in 2017 and 2018.

Reeling out the figures on cameras, he believed was the honest thing to do as the chief steward of the nation’s education sector.

“As far as I am concerned, the best and only way to be accountable to the Nigerian people is through the media,” he said at a press conference in Abuja. The minister also pointed out that opening up the book would ensure civic participation in the projects.

“Civil society groups and communities where these schools are located [will be able] to monitor the implementation of the projects,” he enthused.

His seeming candour inspired this investigation, but the finding showed that his claims are incongruous with reality.

The federal government colleges, also known as unity schools, and their supervising department, have built layers of bureaucratic bulwarks that no journalist or civil society group can penetrate. And inside there, a lot of things go on—things for which many of the school administrators will be hard put to account for.

Perimeter fencing is one of them. And it stands out in the on-going rot on two fronts: the federal government’s N7bn school security infrastructure initiative and the FGC annual capital projects.

A case in point: The Federal Government College, Odogbolu, Ogun, budgeted N180.9m in 2017, and N7.9m in 2018, totaling N188.8 million, for constructing a new perimeter fence, as part of its yearly capital projects. It invited tenders on one of those two occasions. But the school authorities would not welcome the media poking around to know what they spent the money on, compared to what is on the ground.

“We don’t talk to the press as civil servants,” one of the school’s vice principals, who said he had just been transferred there, told the National Daily. “You must get a letter from the ministry permitting you to come and interview us.”

That was a necessary excuse. But, really, at the FGC Odogbolu, a school sprawling over a swathe of land the size of three stadiums, there was nothing to say about the perimeter fencing project.

There was no new fence. No need for a new one, to begin with, let alone budgeting N188m for it in two years. The fence around the school perimeter had been there years before 2017. The profile of the walls close to the school gate, and even elsewhere, revealed a mix of decades-old and recent bricks.

Those living around the school told the newspaper that no construction took place around the perimeter fence in 2017 and 2018. It had been there for as long as they could remember.

Read More: https://www.icirnigeria.org/education-ministry-officials-collude-with-principals-to-sabotage-fgs-safe-school-program/