EMMANUEL SAMUEL
There are anxieties in Taraba State over non-payment of 10-month arrears of N7,000 (Seven thousand Naira) top-up allowances to over 3,000 teachers of the State Education Programme Investment Project (SEPIP).
The teachers, who are already gathering momentum for a showdown, are currently lamenting the non-payment despite several documented complaints lodged at the SEPIP state office in Jalingo, the Taraba State capital.
Investigations by our correspondent showed that the sum of N37.8 million is being released monthly by the World Bank to Taraba SEPIP office for the payment of the monthly stipends.
Some of the aggrieved teachers, who protested at the SEPIP office in Jalingo in December, 2018, were reportedly asked by the Project Accountant to write a formal complaint, attaching their certificates of attendance and an update of bank statement by the complainants.
Our correspondent gathered that the authorities had noted that names of some of the teachers had been deleted from the programme for failing to show up during the monitoring and evaluation exercise carried out in October 2018.
It was also gathered from credible sources that those who were employed in the first and second batches with proper documentation eventually had their names replaced with those who were ready to offer bribes to be employed.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a secondary school principal in Sardauna Local Government Area of the state said many teachers in his school were not paid for over five months adding that some training workshop participants were also not paid the approved N10, 000 earmarked for each person.
He added that there were also concerns about the non-release of World Bank grants for 114 primary and secondary schools.
Our correspondent gathered that cheques for the grants for minor repairs and purchase of instructional materials, amounting to N500,000 to each of the 114 schools, were released by the state governor in May 2018, but many schools were yet to access it. It was also learnt that most of the schools that had opportunity to access the grants failed to utilise it for the purpose for which it was meant.
When contacted, the State Project Coordinator for the scheme, Moh’d Bashir Suleman, blamed the bank for not living up to expectation, saying that the affected teachers could not receive their payments due to issues bothering on incorrect names, account numbers and BVN.
“We are aware of the problems; the problems emanated from three things. The first are those that have issues with their banks, like names mismatch and BVN. Secondly, when we started the programme, we learnt that not all of them were teachers; some were market women and so on. So, we embarked on monitoring and evaluation exercise.
“One of the things we discovered was that the teachers ended up in the local government headquarters. Mind you, the aim of the programme is to deploy teachers to crisis areas. There is a case in Sardauna of a school of not more than 200 students having 83 teachers. So, the aim of the programme is defeated. There are some genuine problems; there are genuine teachers but because they have not gone where they are supposed to be, we have not paid them”.
On why E-payment was not used for ease of payment to the teachers, he said the option was being considered adding that the Commission for Education in Taraba State had directed that all liabilities be settled on or before the 25th of December 2018.
Our Correspondent learnt that the aims and objective of the World Bank Education Assisted Programme Investment Project was to train a total of 5,400 teachers in psycho-social and pedagogy for distribution to crises areas, difficult terrains and Internally Displaced Persons’ (IDP) camps in seven local governments of the state.
Reacting to allegations that some names were replaced with other names, Mr Suleman said, “They were not removed; some were removed for non-attendance. There are genuine cases but we are trying to find out the problem. We did some payments but the problem is still coming back”.
When contacted, the Taraba State Commissioner for Education, Honourable Johannes Jigem, declined comments on the issue. He, however, said, “SEPIP has their director; they have their accountant; they have all they need”.
Also speaking on behalf of the Coordinator, Food Vendor, the Secretary, Social Investment Programme of the state Ministry of Education, Mallam Idris Goje, disclosed that over N30 million cash was recovered from food vendors during the December 2018 screening exercise and would be paid back into government’s
account.
“Where we find a vendor who is not performing, we can block her payment and find out why she did not perform her duties and where her reasons are not genuine, we would delist her and she has to pay the monies she collected. Now, we have declared more than N30 million to be refunded back into government account.
“First, the defaulting vendors, we had to block their accounts and the other vendors will continue their cooking and collect their money. We had to screen them and clear them. In that process, they would have to lose days of not cooking. We have all records of the funds refunded by all the vendors and we are going to pay into government account. Those whose accounts have been blocked are not going to cook.
“We have compiled the names of all the refunds to the Federal Government. It took FCMB almost one year to repatriate the money. They have failed to refund more than N50 million with them and the Federal Government keeps demanding. They are enjoying the interest accrued.
“The Social Investment Program has recorded tremendous success in all the four components. Taraba has more than 400,000 pupils that are benefiting. The cooks are feeding 399,099 pupils. In Taraba State throughout last year, there were no hitches. The Federal Government pays the cooks directly into their accounts. The money spent in 20 days for feeding the pupils is N558,757,400.
“Throughout 2018, the Federal Government was expected to give 12 tranches. I can tell you that all the 12 tranches have already been paid to the cooks and they have been doing their work. The impact of the programme is that there has been a large increase in enrolment and more to that; the programme has recruited over 6,000 cooks in the state and that has improved the economy. Go to remote areas where there were no markets, we now have markets.
“Based on the design of the programme, there is a monitoring mechanism which starts from the national level to state level down to the local government level. The monitoring mechanism at the state level is the multi-sectoral team.
“On monthly basis, we send our personnel to monitor activities of the local governments using the education secretaries who are under the SUBEB. At the education secretary’s office, we have the inspectorate division. The inspectorate division has allocation for each supervisor who runs the school based on their capacity and personnel. They go to the
school daily.
“Even at the school level, there are the school-based management committee comprising the headmaster, community, school prefects and teachers. They monitor and supervise what is being cooked for the pupils. After you have fed the number of pupil assigned to you, there is a form that you will sign and at the end of every week, all the forms would be submitted to the Education Secretary (ES) who would, in turn, submit to us.”
