The reconstruction of Girls Secondary School Chibok, Borno State which was razed down by the Boko Haram sect after about 200 school children were abducted in 2014, will cost the Federal government N1.05 billion Naira.
This was made known by the Vice Chairman Presidential Committee on North East Initiative (PCNI) Tijjani Tumsah during the weekend in Abuja while giving account of the expenditure of the Committee from December 2016 to August 2017.
The PCNI boss also said that they spent N169.99 million on School fees under the Safe School Initiative (SSI) while SSI Exam Fees gulped N10.68 million and N95.47 million was spent on SSI Transportation.
Tumsah disclosed that the total budgetary releases under the period was N7.54 bn while actual expenditure was N6.15bn leaving a balance of N1.39 bn.
Making further clarifications, he said that in 2016, the Capital budget proposal from the federal government was N3.2bn while N1.60bn was inherited from the defunct Presidential Initiative on North East (PINE) just as N45bn was budgeted in 2017. He said that out of the proposals, only N4.8 bn was released in 2016 while N10 bn was released in 2017 for capital projects.
He reported that N289.58 million was received as grants from the African Development Bank (AfDB) in 2016 while N250,000 was also received from the Nigerian High Commission Mosque, UK in 2017.
On the intervention activities going on in the North East, The Vice Chairman, stated that PCNI is a special purpose vehicle which coordinate all interventions going all in the North East where over 2million peoples have been displaced.
He said, “We are having gradual increment of early recovery for resettlements, rebuilding of homes and structures that were destroyed which will helps in increasing local governance.
“The food distribution has increased tremendously and the ticketing system is also on going.
“The Chibok School has been reconstructed and we have ensure the resumption of the school and it was redesigned to meet international standards and we are hopeful that it will resume very soon.
“There are still security challenges around the area so a lot of efforts has been put into security, walling and fencing of the school.”
He also made clarifications that donor agencies do not give money to PCNI but carry out their interventions directly while PCNI serves as a coordinator.
“They come with their programme and they go about executing it. What PCNI does is to bring all donors to the table so as to know what each agency is doing and how it can be better coordinated to avoid duplication of efforts.
Commenting on the N2.66bn spent on SSI he said, “SSI programme was about 2000 students in 43 Unity Schools in the country.
“We pay their school fees and other commitments including transport money, pocket money and their needs when they are in schools. The school fees are paid directly to the school.
“We visit them every term and do a lot of monitoring and evaluation. We also pay examination fees to them” Tumsah maintained.
The Director Media and Communication of PCNI Alkassin Abdulkadir, while commenting on the Chibok school renovation said that the project is handled by the Civil Engineering Department of the Nigerian Army.
He said that a lot facilities will be in the school to get it to world class standard.
According to him, some of the facilities to be included in the school include, “A sports track, dormitories, bullet blocks for the building, ultra modern ICT, staff quarters and perimeter fence.
“The old buildings of the school were entirely pulled down” he clarified.
Myke Uzendu, Abuja
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