By ABUBAKAR YUSUF

The Executive Secretary of Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), Dr. Hamid Bobboyi, says that a total of 1,147 communities across the country would benefit from special intervention projects under the School Base Management Committee (SBMC).

He made this known during the national flag-off of the Southern phase of the 2019 School Base Management Committee-School Improvement Programme held recently in Calabar.

UBEC’s Head of Public Relations and Protocol, Mr David Apeh, in a statement in Abuja Friday, quoted Bobboyi as saying that SBMC was a mechanism for increased community participation in education development.

According to the statement, the Executive Secretary said the flag-off activities were crucial to successful project implementation, which are deliberately executed with a view to enhancing project implementers’ capacity to plan, supervise and deliver on each project component as provided in the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).

“I am glad to announce for 2019 SBMC-SIP, 1,147 communities will benefit from the projects, ranging from special grant of five million each to macro and micro grant of two million and three hundred and fifty thousand respectively,” he said.

According to him, it was also important to note that the stakeholders in the aforementioned 1,147 schools and communities have committed themselves to not less than 10 per cent of the Universal Basic Education (UBE) contribution as counterpart funding for the smooth implementation of all the designated 2019 projects.

Bobboyi noted that all the Southern states have a total of 527 SBMC-SIP projects in the 2019 funding arrangement, adding that 31 of these projects were in special case category, 170 macro projects and 340 in the micro category.

Declaring the programme open, the Governor of Cross River State, Ben Ayade, charged the UBEC management to find a way to work towards addressing the failures of the present generation.

He called for the complete overhauling of the nation’s education system, stressing that the rots in the school today could be removed if all hands were on deck, the conscience of the school pupils would be taken care of.

Governor Ayade also advocated the retraining of teachers as “people with good education listen to their conscience, as equality and good conscience of education starts with the mind."

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