By Bukola Adama
Kwara State Governor, Alhaji Abdulfatah Ahmed has called for a reduction in the counterpart fund payable by state governments as matching grant for the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) programme.
The governor, who made the call while receiving members of the UBEC monitoring team led by its Deputy Director of Planning, Research and Statistics, Osahon Igbinoba in Ilorin on Monday, said that this would allow more states to access the grants.
He implored the UBEC board to intensify efforts in making the counterpart fund clause removed from the UBEC enabling law or reduced to 10 per cent from the State while UBEC provides the 90 per cent matching grants.
Governor Ahmed noted that states across the federation have been lagging behind in the provision of the 50 per cent counterpart funds due to drop in federal allocation accruable to them from the federal government, which he said had also affected their capacity to borrow.
He added that it is almost impossible for States to contribute 50 per cent contribution under the current revenue profile but with 10 per cent as counterpart fund requirement, most states will be able to make the funds available.
The governor expressed the State government’s readiness to access the funds, noting that the government had earmarked N876million as counterpart fund for the 2014/2015 tranche.
Speaking further, Ahmed observed that Kwara State had to go through financial engineering to ensure that salaries of workers are paid regularly and that developmental projects are carried to completion.
He commended the effort of the federal government towards improving infrastructure at the basic education level across the country, and promised that the state government will continue to partner UBEC to improve quality of primary and junior secondary education in the State.
Earlier, Osahon Igbinoba disclosed that the team was in the state to monitor the 2014/2015 Federal government intervention projects under UBEC.
He noted that 20 per cent of the projects had not been implemented due to some bottle necks.
Igbinoba, therefore, urged the state government to expedite action so that the projects can be fast tracked for benefit of the pupils.
…to receive N1bn ABP loan, March, says aide
The Kwara State Government is expected to receive the sum of N1billion being proceeds of the Anchor Borrowers Programme (ABP) loan from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to support its local farmers in March ahead The funds are expected in March 2018 ahead of the 2018 farming season.
The fund, which is designed to support local farmers organised in co-operatives of 10persons each for each crop, is being processed at the CBN through Union Bank of Nigeria.
Speaking on Sobi FM in a programme; Ibi Abase de, the Special Adviser on Agriculture and Water Resources to the Governor, Otunba Anu Ibiwoye noted that farmers in the state would soon be beneficiaries of the N1billion proceeds of the ABP loan.
According to him, the loan is specifically targeted at farmers in co-operative societies producing maize and rice. He added that the state government had written to the CBN to grant a waiver in order to include its Cassava and Soya beans farmers under the ABP scheme.
He advised all farmers interested in participating in the Anchor Borrowers programme to register their co-operatives with the Kwara Agro mall in good time while those who are yet to register themselves in co-operatives are advised to do so at the Ministry of Commerce and Co-operatives and also at the Kwara Agro-mall to be able to participate in the scheme.
