TheCable

Senate President Ahmad Lawan says the Safe School Initiative stood no chance of success.

The programme was launched in 2014 after 276 schoolgirls were abducted from their school in Chibok, Borno state.

Speaking on Thursday at a hearing organised by the senate joint committee on education and tertiary institutions, Lawan wondered why the ministry of finance is in charge of the initiative, instead of the education ministry.

The senate president said the National Council on Education (NCE) ought to have come up with a policy to implement the initiative.

“This programme, Safe School Initiative, was designed to fail. What is the meaning of the ministry of finance handling this? It was unnecessarily controlled by the ministry of finance,” he said.

“Ordinarily, I would have thought that the National Council on Education, with the federal ministry of education and all the states’ ministries of education, would come up with a national policy and strategy for the Safe School Initiative.

“The ministry of finance is just to provide funds, appropriated or donated. So this programme was designed to fail. This is why we are where we are today.

“I believe at the end of the day, we should look at the possibility of taking that programme from the ministry of finance and domicile it where it rightly belongs.”

On her part, Ibrahim Gaidam, chairman of the joint committee, said the initiative is meant to restore normalcy in the education sector in the north-east and the entire country.