By Our Correspondent<\/p>\n
The Federal Government Friday mapped out stronger measures for safe schools initiative in the country with planned involvement of security agencies in ensuring safety and security of teachers and pupils in schools across the 774 local government councils .<\/p>\n
This is as the Minister of Education , Dr Tunji Alausa who rolled out the measures while fielding questions from journalists after an interface with the Senate’s Ad – hoc committee on Safe Schools Initiative , requested transfer of management of funds for the scheme from the Ministry of Finance to Ministry of Education .<\/p>\n
Alausa at the Interface, disclosed that the ministry was working with security agencies to develop a comprehensive national framework for school safety.<\/p>\n
“We are collaborating closely with the Office of the National Security Adviser, the Department of State Services, the Armed Forces, the Nigeria Police and other security agencies to develop a comprehensive Safe Schools framework. School safety cannot be handled in a fragmented manner.<\/p>\n
“Safe Schools is much broader than physical security. It includes perimeter fencing, solar-powered lighting, water and sanitation facilities, recruitment of school security personnel, deployment of technology and the establishment of effective monitoring systems”, he said .<\/p>\n
He stressed further that emphasis is being placed by the Ministry on the need for central coordination of the initiative .<\/p>\n
“There are many components of the Safe Schools Initiative, and they require a central command-and-control structure. While the security agencies will continue to perform their constitutional duties, the Federal Ministry of Education will provide policy direction, coordinate implementation with states and ensure that every school benefits from the programme”, he assured. <\/p>\n
Earlier in his submissions before the Senator Orji Uzor Kalu ( Abia North ) led committee, the Minister of Education said since his assumption of office , the only fund disbursement made for implementation of the initiative was to the Police and the Civil Defense but that a full fledged department has been created by the Ministry for proper implementation, requiring direct management of fund .<\/p>\n
“Since I assumed office, the only significant disbursements have been targeted interventions to security agencies, including the Nigeria Police Force and the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps. Those payments were administered through the Federal Ministry of Finance.<\/p>\n
“We have now established a full-fledged Safe Schools Department within the Federal Ministry of Education. Previously, there was only a small unit, but we felt that was inadequate considering the importance of school safety which make us to seek for domiciling management of the fund in the Education Ministry “, he said .<\/p>\n
But in a separate interview , the Minister of Finance , Mr Taiwo Oyedele told journalists that the issue of management of the fund between his Ministry and that of Education was not a big one as it would be sorted out . <\/p>\n
According to him , the most important thing about the scheme is to keep the schools safe and secure across the country .<\/p>\n
” For us it’s not so much of who is controlling the budget, that’s not even very important and the government policies has, for example, if you have service-wide votes or you have interventions, by law it’s the ministry of finance that will manage it because minister of finance acts as the accountant for the country. Under that we also have the office of the accountant general. So, between us we’ll sort out those issues. <\/p>\n
“What is even the priority for us is how do we ensure that the funding is adequate and the monies are released on time so that some of these crimes can be prevented rather than us trying to do damage control”, he said .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Our Correspondent The Federal Government Friday mapped out stronger measures for safe schools initiative in the country with planned involvement of security agencies in ensuring safety and security of teachers and pupils in schools across the 774 local government councils . This is as the Minister of Education , Dr Tunji Alausa who rolled […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16153,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16152"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16152\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16154,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16152\/revisions\/16154"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}