The Adamawa State Government has lamented that the former president Goodluck Jonathan’s N700 million worth Almajiri schools are wasting away because the state lacks enough funds to implement the needed plans.
The state government made this known in Yola, the state capital through the Chairman of the Adamawa State Universal Education Board, Dr. Mohammed Toungo.
Tuoungo while lauding the success of the educational initiative set up by the American University of Nigeria, targeted at almajiri children between the ages of six and 17 years said: “We appreciate the AUN for taking up the almajiri problem. But as it is right now, we have over half a million of these children roaming the streets. If you take 22,000 out of it; how many per cent is it?”
He further noted that the number of almajiri students who do not have access to proper and quality education bothers the state but the state has little or no help to offer as the funds to carry out such project is lacking.
Estimating the least the state will budget on such a project in order to revive the non-operational schools and also provide quality education, Toungo noted that the state government will have to spend not less than N100 million in constructing each of the seven schools.
He said: “But since 2012 up till now they have not commenced because the recruitment of the specialised teachers to the schools had not been done because of the expensive nature of the teachers.
“The feeding of the almajiri is also a big problem. I think the enrollment we intended was only 420 and the American University educated 22,000 in one year. It was expensive, capital intensive and the beneficiaries were very few. So they (schools) are there lying waste.
“We have asked the USAID to give us money so that we can start the schools but they refused us except we come with a performance indicator.”