By Alade Adisa
Despite what some may see as improved allocation to the sector, Nigeria’s proposed N3.5 trillion federal budget for education in 2025 is still below international benchmark for developing nations.
The allocation is just 7.05 percent of the proposed budget of N49.7 trillion.
Of the proposed budget, defence got the highest allocation of N4.9 trillion and was followed by Infrastructure which got N4.06 trillion. Education came third.
The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organizations, UNESCO, had suggested long ago that developing nations should devote between 15-20 percent of their budgets to education consistently to be able to bridge the gap between them and developed nations.
An analysis of the federal budgets for education in recent years by New Daily Prime shows that President Bola Tinubu’s first budget, that is the one for 2024, allocated N2.18 trillion to education and that was about 7.9 percent of the budget.
Comparatively, it means the proposed 2025 budget for education might be higher in figure, but its share of the total budget was not as high as previous year’s.
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During the eight years of Muhammadu Buhari as President, his allocation of N1.79 trillion in 2023, which was 8.8 percent of N20.5 trillion budget, was the highest he ever did for education.
In 2022, Buhari allocated N1.18 trillion, which was 7.2 percent of the budget to the sector.
With increase in the number of public universities for instance, the provision of facilities could still be a big challenge.
Another area of concern is how the government hopes to raise enough money to fund the budget.
It is common that most funds allocated to capital projects, especially, are never released before the year runs out, leaving a litany of abandoned projects.
