PROBLEM AND PROSPECT OF EDUCATIONAL FINANCING IN NIGERIA

PROBLEM AND PROSPECT OF EDUCATIONAL FINANCING IN NIGERIA

Educational financing  is an  aspect of public finance which consist of  all the aspects of financing of  education  from the  sourcing  of funding, allocation and expenditure of the funds budgeted for Education especially for the procurement  of goods and the services of men and materials (Agbobu 1983, Borokhovich,Bricker, Zivney and Sundaram, 1995). Financing of education constitute a significant area of Economics of Education (Akangbou, 1986, Adeyemi, 1998).

Education financing is important as money is needed for the payment of salaries of staff, maintain the plant and keep the services going. Educational finance is of vital importance to education and economic growth (Sheehan, 1973; Eaton, and Nofsinger, 2000; Taggert, 2003).The various sources of Educational financing comes from domestic and external

financing sources, addressing  both quantity and quality. Educational financing pays particular attention to the funding of basic education. It state three main issue. First, more resources could be available for basic education if state governments contributed, than leaving it for the federal and local governments. Second, governance and accountability issues should be addressed so current levels of funding would achieve better results Third,  the  increase from donor agencies would channel more resources  to areas with preferential  needs, and thus have a greater impact.

Education financing is a concurrent responsibility of both the federal and state governments under the constitution. Sources of Educational financing include direct allocations from the federal government through the Universal Basic Education Intervention

Fund and the Education Trust Fund, Sourcing from the  state governments, local governments, international donors, private individuals and organizations, nongovernmental organizations. The lack of information in some states makes it difficult to determine state and local government expenditures for education, which impedes on the determination of accurate figures for Educational financing Vaizey (1961), argued that the financing of education comes from payment of fees by parents, repayable loans to parents, local government taxes, general budgetary funds, gifts and remission of taxes. Apart from direct tax, Vaizey (1962) mentioned indirect tax and property. Educational Expenditure: Educational expenditure constitutes the aspect of educational finance which shows with the pattern of expenditure the amount allocated to education.

Educational financing may be used for analyzing the financial aspects of education and to determine the parameter for projecting the trends of an educational system (Hallak, 1969). Thus time trend of educational expenditure determines the flow of educational finance. In view of this Adesina (1982) stated that   educational expenditure is determined by budgetary allocations. He defined a budget as an estimate of revenues and expenditures for a given period of time, annually. Woodhall (1987) defined a budget as a document which shows the recurrent and capital expenditures. Recurrent or current expenditures consist of expenditures on consumable goods such as books, stationery and fuel with focus on short-time benefits. While capital expenditures is expenditures on durable assets such as buildings and equipment which are expected to yield benefits over a longer period

PROBLEM

Educational planning places less significance on management, coupled with lack of reliable

Statistics, population data. Securing regional cooperation in data management and

Cooperative planning is difficult. Financial governance policies are weak, which promotes lack of transparency and

Accountability.  Increases in Office overheads consume the larger proportion of resources at the expense of operations and management. Mechanisms for enhancing the effective use of resources to operational (classroom)

are required   to build capacity for planning and financial management.

Many State governments commit few resources to basic education, instead prioritizing

Higher education.

Also some state government depends on local governments (LGs) to fund primary education, thereby creating a funding gap.

Lack of effective monitoring and evaluation

Monitoring and Evaluation are imperative to ensure resources are allocated on a needs basis. Performance targets that include active results monitoring could strengthen planning, political Commitment and capacity. Although the National Planning Commission is currently finalizing a new M&E Framework for the country, its willing adoption by state governments is questionable, given the history of past attempts at intergovernmental coordination.

The inability of donor agency to make significant impact; current design and process of donor interventions affect their ability to make impact

PROSPECT

All levels of Nigerian government must take the lead in making education finance work; international donors need only play the supportive role of investing their resources in strengthening systems.

The State Governments must show commitment to basic education by contributing significantly to its funding, rather than relying on local governments contributions. State  , federal and local government contributions,  will greatly reduce basic education funding gaps.

Performance and reporting targets should be setup and matched with grants on basic education to serve as motivation strategy for achieving goals.

The setting up of quality key performance indicators (KPIs).will facilitates the monitoring and evaluation of educational financing

The availability of data wills assist in determining fund budget and implementation

UBEC disbursements should also be in tranches, corresponding to levels of KPI.

Unaccessed grants to individual state government should not accumulate indefinitely; loss of accessed can weaken educational financing base.

Enforcing state government to fulfill their funding commitment to education in the state or lose their annual grants

Design of templates for the collection and reporting of information so as to enhance harmony in statics across the state

FG investment in provision of infrastructure for data collection will help build capacity

The Clarification of roles and improvements in governance systems would help increase efficiency and effectiveness. The.  Installing   of a routine expenditure tracking system to help determine the effective use of funds would also as sit in  increase accountability and transparency in spending.

The need for Increased coordination and planning among donors could bring about greater effectiveness. This means working in partnership terms with the government, and also includes increased coordination with government as well as a clear prioritization of sector needs. In order to make a sustainable impact, donor resources should focus on building systems, rather than operations. Nigerian governments should mobilize and deploy more resources than donors may be willing to bring in. If taken in conjunction with the previous recommendations, donor resources channeled through improved Nigerian systems may be highly effective.

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