Education Trust Fund Bill Will Solve Learning Challenges In Zamfara — Kanoma

Yusuf Alhassan Kanoma is the Chairman House Committee on Basic Secondary and Non-Formal Education in Zamfara State House of Assembly and has sponsored a bill for an Education Trust Fund. He spoke on what the bill seeks to address and how they plan to tackle the out of school children problem in the state.

What is the House doing towards addressing issues around education in the state?

We have been consistent in giving our own due contribution. It is only the House of Assembly in our own era that we are able to add N1.5 billion in education, as against what we normally experienced, which was reduction.

I believe this is the only administration that has not received any support or contribution from any external agency.

Should we expect any law that will tackle the issue of out of school children from the house?

Well, not just out of school children because I wanted to say regarding the out of school, as long as we are reducing, we get to a level where we don’t have out of school children; we will have all of them in school.

But the house is working towards elevating any issue in education; we passed the anti-hawking bill recently and I was discussing with the speaker, because the house also passed a bill on Education Trust Fund which can do a lot in education.

We source funds from different angles because the major problem we have is getting funds and releasing funds. In most instances, we have our own money because we have the 1 per cent education levy, if we add that from all the contracts, it is enough money to manage some of our problems.

We equally have our own contributions, the private schools need to pay something, also from so many companies and there are so many sources.

I was also disturbing the speaker to take the bill to the governor for accent, when they took the bill to him, the governor said there was an issue he wanted us to revisit.

He wanted the executive chairman but we made an executive secretary so that he controls the spending, so that if the organisation is politicized the rate of spending won’t be so much. That is why we decided to use the civil servants executive secretariat. The membership is drawn from the ministry and house of assembly and other critical stakeholders so that they don’t have to pay extra.

The regulation or recruitment of the staff will not come differently, it will be the normal state government civil servants. Unfortunately I wasn’t there to convince the governor because I sponsored the bill and know much about it.

I explained to the speaker but I am not sure whether it is signed but as soon as it is signed most of our problems in education will be solved.

So, if we are able to get that bill, we have the resources and it’s not something that is directly linked to the government because of the 1 per cent education levy.

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