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| Cross -section of participants from Ajeromi-Ifelodun, Apapa and Agege L.G |
“Everybody is a
stakeholder in education; it is the responsibility of all, because education
for all is the responsibility of all. That is why we are imploring members of
the public to take responsibility by helping to monitor basic education
projects in their respective communities.”
These are the words of
Johnson Ibidapo, Human Development Initiatives (HDI)programme officer at UNILAG today during the sensitization
program organized for people from Ajeromi-Ifelodun, Apapa and Agege local government areas in Lagos by Human
Development Initiatives (HDI).
He said the purpose of
the 3 days sensitization programme is to educate the Monitoring team from
different local government areas in Lagos on how to monitor and discover if
projects meant for schools in their areas are well executed.
“We are training
them on the content of Lagos state Universal Basis Education; 2016 Action plan.
The action plan involves basic education projects which includes Primary
schools and Junior Secondary schools. There are four categories of the projects,
Construction project, Rehabilitation, Fencing and Furniture. These projects
have been allocated to different schools in local government areas and if not
monitored, contractors might abandon it and not deliver the job given to them.”
He stressed further
that, “The idea is; if you are living in Apapa for an example, there are
projects allocated to a particular school in that area, It would be great if
someone in that area could take a personal initiative to monitor the projects once
he is already armed with the Action Plan which we at HDI have already
simplified. We have a hand book we have already given to all of them today.
They will leave this place to go out to track these particular projects; if
there are issues like corruption, disparities; we have provided numbers and
other channels of avenues they could report to. We want all stakeholders to be
involved in ensuring a quality basic education in the state.
To buttress his point;
he said, “There was a project that was abandoned in one of the schools in Ojo
local government in Lagos, when the Contractor discovered our monitoring team
in the area, he quickly ran back and got the project completed. This is one of many
cases of achievement we have recorded so far. Providing appropriate monitoring
is a means of curbing corruption and another means of ensuring the delivery of
goods and services to schools. We are not out to name or shame anybody;
what we are after is to actually ensure that the right quality and quantity of
education get delivered to schools.”
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| Johnson Ibidapo, addressing participants |
Reacting to the
financial aspect, he said, “We have some Monitors that have been organized into
groups; they are known as our monitoring team members that are being financed
by HDI.
“The other group are
the local community members, they are not going to be financed because they are
Baales in their communities. These people are made up of Community Development
Association (CDA), Community Development Committee (CDC), some are from School
Based Management Committees (SBMC); Parent Forum etc. These are people that are
already involved in issues that concern their respective communities. If you
are a SBMC member or chairman, and a project is allocated to your school, you
don’t need any money to do the monitoring, all you need is information.
We on our part will provide the information and they will carry out the
monitoring.”
In a situation where
allocated projects are abandoned, Johnson said, “There are communication
channels; once we get information of such anomalies we give the feedback to
SUBEB. Some of the reports we got from our monitoring team have been rectified
some contractors who have been defaulting have also been forced to do the
needful. We are always in touch with SUBEB, meanwhile
the action plan we are using was secured from UBEC (Universal Basic Education
in Abuja), and we make sure we keep them posted on our findings.”
The monitoring have
been wonderful, once people know that there is a third eye watching, they tend
to do it right.
Johnson Ibidapo concluded.
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| Chief Joseph Ogunmola, Baale Marine Beach, Lagos |
One of the
participants, the Baale of Marine Beach, Chief Joseph Ogunmola has lauded the
programme and call on parents and members of the public to take education as
everybody’s responsibilities. He said, “We are grateful for what HDI has put in
place because we believe it will better the life of education in our society.
Parents should wake up to their responsibilities, this is everybody’s business
and the more concerned we are the better for our children. Government cannot do
it alone, so parents too should serve as volunteers to monitor projects that
are meant to be in place in schools in their areas.”
