"CORRUPTION", THREAT TO CHILDREN'S FUTURE

The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project, an activist group, has said corruption is one of the challenges facing education in Nigeria. It, therefore, urged the Federal Government to probe the Universal Basic Education Fund.

The Executive Director, SERAP, Mr. Adetokunbo Mumuni, while speaking to our correspondent, said government would be toying with the future of the country if it failed to tackle corruption in the education sector, especially when it concerned children at the basic level.

“It will be disastrous if the foundation level is corrupted,” he added.

Mumuni stressed that if there was corruption at the primary level, the spate of corruption at the secondary and tertiary levels would be better imagined. He pointed out that the injury corruption had done to the sector was monumental.

He added that the menace had both financial and socio-economic implications on the progress of the country.

Mumuni said, “Within three years, $21m was lost to corruption between 2005 and 2006. If we convert that into naira, it means that billions of naira have been mismanaged and embezzled.

“We petitioned the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission when we discovered this fact and it confirmed that what we were saying was correct. It recovered about N2.2bn and it embarked on the prosecution of those found culpable in the crime.”

The SERAP boss advised that the education ministry should be the sole funder of the sector, where the trust funds established by the government failed to fulfil their purposes.

SERAP and global anti-corruption organisation, Transparency International, had in a joint press statement called on the Federal Government to “account for the huge sums of money that are invested in the education sector and be serious about teaching children the value of honesty.”

At the launch of  Global Corruption Report: Education, recently, Mumuni had said corruption had a devastating impact on developing nations, particularly in Africa.

“With respect to Nigeria and the work of SERAP, it is disheartening that this cankerworm was noticed at the foundational level of education in Nigeria – the basic education relating to the Nigerian children – their first nine years of education, where massive embezzlement and misappropriation of funds running into billions of naira took place,” he added.