Two ministers admitted funding delays and fragmented oversight have weakened school security nationwide, pledging closer coordination as the Senate widens its Safe Schools Initiative probe to five more agencies, demanding accountability for billions in intervention funds. Sunday Aborisade reports.
Twelve years after 276 schoolgirls were dragged from their dormitory in Chibok, and barely three weeks after the 39 abducted school children and six teachers in Oyo State have been successfully rescued after spending 56 days in captivity, the Federal Government moved penultimate Friday to answer a question that has trailed the Safe Schools Initiative since its birth: where did the money go, and why are Nigerian children still not safe in their classrooms?
The answer, delivered under the unblinking gaze of the Senate Ad-hoc Committee on the Safe Schools Initiative, came in two parts and from two ministers who, for the first time, appeared to be reading from the same script.
At separate investigative hearings chaired by Senator Orji Uzor Kalu, Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Mr Taiwo Oyedele, and his Education counterpart, Dr Tunji Alausa,
pledged that the turf-guarding that has long shadowed the initiative would give way to coordination, between their ministries, security agencies, state governments, development partners and the National Assembly.
