The Jigawa State government in collaboration with the United Nations Children’s Fund has recruited 90 officials of the state to train them in result-based budgeting in the education sector.

Education Specialist with UNICEF Field office in Kano State, Muntaka Muktar, said this on Wednesday at a three-day workshop in Katsina.

Mr Mukhtar said the exercise was part of the UNICEF intervention on education financing.

He added that the overall objective of providing the support was to ensure better education financing, with sufficient and sustained resources that enable every child to learn and acquire skills for the future.

He said, “We want to ensure that we support the government in achieving adequate, efficient, equitable, transparent and accountable financing for education. UNICEF appreciates governments that allocate more resources in their budget to ensure that education is supported. We also want to make sure that at least governments can look back and see the amount that goes to the child, or how they can do the analysis to the benefit of the child. We want to ensure that with adequate education financial support, the state government will focus on two of the greatest monsters bedevilling education.’’

Mr Mukhtar said the greatest monsters include the increased number of out-of-school children, and a situation in which children are in school, but they are not learning.

He emphasised that education financing is introduced to ensure that every resource provided by the government counts in ensuring that children are in school, and they are learning.

He stated, “For the time being, we have about 90 key government officials from Jigawa State, and most of them are education planners, and finance officers. Some of them are budget officers from different government establishments, including the ministry of budget and economic planning, finance, and the ministry for local government. We also have many CSOs that have been invited to promote accountability and transparency in the effective, equitable and adequate use of resources in the education sector.’’

One of the facilitators, Vahyala Kwaga, said the participants were expected to not only understand what results-based budgeting entails, but to know its relevance to public administration and public management.

He said, “We would like to see the implementation of the principles, concepts, theories learned here, and basically see a practical application of these principles and methodologies in their day-to-day activities, in their monthly, quarterly and yearly budgeting. We expect to see a difference in the approach to public financial management and education improvement that can be traced to this particular training. All in all, we expect to see better management of finances, better expenditure and improved education in Jigawa State.’’

Also speaking, the Permanent Secretary, Jigawa State ministry of basic education, Baffa Abubakar, called on the participants to utilise what they learned during the workshop, especially the implementation of the budget.

“You should make sure that you form a network that will help you align and certainly answer questions that may come during your normal working activity,” he said.

He drew their attention to the importance of mind shift in their workplace, noting that without the mind shift, they wouldn’t what was needed. 

(NAN)