A Non-Government Organization, Rural Women and Youth Development (RUWOYD), has trained 90 Sokoto School-Based Management Committee (SBMC) members on budget tracking techniques and ways to make inputs into annual education budgets.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the training, which took place on Thursday, was part of a project tagged: “Tax Justice and Gender Responsive Public Service and Breaking Barriers”, jointly anchored by RUWOYD and ActionAid Nigeria, with the support of the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD).
The programme facilitator, Mr Olowu Claude, said the project aimed at improving public education policies, systems and expenditures, sensitive to the rights of girls and marginalised children.
According to him, the project was focused on enhancing children’s access, especially girls and marginalised children to free, qualitative and inclusive education, while striving for strong, active movement of community and civil society structures.
He noted that the move was geared towards ensuring that government increased the size of the national budget by raising fair taxes, particularly corporate tax.
Claude cited the training as a capacity building exercise for SBMC members on budget literacy, adding that participants were drawn from Tambuwal, Sokoto North and Binji local government areas of Sokoto state.
Malam Habibu Harisu, a resource person, emphasised the need for government to allow SBMCs to make inputs into the annual education budget planning and process.
Harisu, a Journalist, said SBMC members had a great role to play in tracking projects provided in the fiscal education budgets, to ensure inclusion, implementation and execution of standard projects and services.
He noted that SBMC’s participation would help in tackling challenges affecting many schools in rural communities, as well as help the government execute projects that have direct bearing on the masses.
This would further help the government to know the exact needs and challenges of most of the schools, he added.
On his part, the Chairman of SBMC, Government Secondary School Binji, Alhaji Abubakar Garba, called on Budget stakeholders and other civil society organisations to intensify their campaign for the inclusion of SBMCs in Budget planning and process.
Garba added that there were projects that were executed in some schools which did not prioritise the basic needs of the school communities.
NAN reports that participants expressed satisfaction over the training describing it as relevant and timely.
During the training, participants explained the respective SBMC contributions to their schools and this was followed by collective discussions, suggestions and how to overcome some challenges.(NAN)
