The Minister of the Federal Capital Territory Minister, Mr Nyesom Wike, says a total of $1,045,176,470 billion has been committed for the development of infrastructures in the education sector.
The minister stated this at the sixth International Conference on Learning Cities held in Jubail industrial city, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
According to him, this includes N3,500,000,000.00 billion counterpart funding from Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), bringing the total commitment of infrastructural development to approximately N177,,000,000,000.00 billion.
The minister who was represented by the Minister of State FCT, Dr. Mariya Mahmoud, also noted that Abuja’s annual budget for the development of education has surpassed the UNESCO benchmark of 26 per cent.
This is contained in a statement by the Special Assistant on Media to the FCT Minister of State, Austine Elemue, in Abuja
The statement explains that the total investment in different sectors of education, including the renovation of twenty one primary and junior secondary schools and the establishment of thirty senior secondary schools.
It adds that other area of infrastructural investment include the tertiary education sector, adding that the FCT Administration has committed the sum of N14,529,622,993 billion for the completion and launch of FCT University, Abaji.
According to the statement, UNESCO recommends that member nations have a budgetary allocation benchmark of at least 26 per cent to education.
“This benchmark is intended to ensure that countries can adequately address needs of their education system such as teachers, training, infrastructure development and educational technology.
“It might interest my audience to know that Abuja’s annual budget for education surpasses the UNESCO benchmark”.
The statement reiterates that FCTA has invested heavily in the training and retraining of teachers and educational infrastructure in the six area councils of the territory.
It affirms that the FCTA has adopted a “whole school” approach system that promotes peace, security, and tolerance through knowledge, skills and global awareness.
According to the statement the sixth International Conference on Learning Cities (ICLC 6) focuses on strategies to promote climate action through lifelong learning.
The conference’s theme is “Learning cities at the forefront of climate action”.
The conference brought together representatives from UNESCO learning cities, policy-makers, educators, researchers, and other stakeholders.
