Education for Development (E4D), a civil society organization, with a mandate to promote and advocate for reforms for better outcomes and outputs in the education sector of Nigeria. In fulfilling it’s mandate E4D holds government institutions to account while ensuring standards are established and improved upon.
E4D, in keeping with its mandate and as part of its ongoing 2020 budget implementation assessment of MDAs, paid a joint working visit in partnership with an umbrella body of civil society organizations to NIEPA , an Institute under the supervision of the Federal Ministry of Education, whose head office is in Ondo City, Ondo State.
Speaking to journalists on the outcome of the visit, the Executive Director E4D Mr. Lukas Chimdi expressed “grave concern over the scale of irregularities in the Institute. The tour was meant to evaluate the 2020 budget implementation of key government institutions based on a tip off that corruption has taken over the institution with little hope of abating without urgent intervention.” Lukas Chimdi said that “upon arrival at the institute, the 9man delegation met the absence of key management staff of NIEPA, despite having pre-informed the institute in writing of our coming and gotten the nod of the institute”.
Mr. Chimdi further said that “answers to important questions raised by the team could not be provided as key management staff were inexplicably absent, while the Director General, Prof. Olivet Iornenge Jagusah, has been out of his station for over two months, while the registrar and Bursar were said to be on leave and absent from work respectively”. On physical projects inspected, Chimdi posited that “it is troubling that an Institute that is meant to build capacity for educational planners and managers would be managed in such a manner”, while noting that “the Institute’s only verifiable capital project titled “construction of training and seminar complex at the institute” was poorly constructed and did not justify the over 160million Naira expended on the project”.
The E4D also alleged that “attention wasn’t given to the provisions of the Public Procurement Act, as the management of NIEPA couldn’t provide evidence of the contract process meeting the requirements of the law”. Chimdi went on to argue that “it is organizations like NIEPA that are giving the president a bad name, as those entrusted to serve therein have thrown Mr. President’s anticorruption posturing to the gutters, and we hereby call on President Muhammadu Buhari and the relevant antigraft agencies to act immediately to save NIEPA and restore it to its original founding purpose”.
Thursday, December 19, 2024
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