Reported by Ariajegbe Sylvia Esezobor
The Universal Basic Education Commission has unveiled a digital platform that will enable parents and communities to track basic education projects and funds accessed by states, as the commission prepares to commence implementation of its 10-year Universal Basic Education Roadmap, 2026–2035, in October.
The UBEC Executive Secretary, Dr Aisha Garba, disclosed this in Abuja on Monday at a two-day consultative workshop with chairmen of the 36 State Universal Basic Education Boards and directors of the commission. Garba said the Basic Education Action Plan Management System was developed to improve transparency, planning and monitoring of interventions under the new 10-year roadmap. According to her, the platform will provide information on funds accessed by states and projects being implemented, allowing communities to monitor interventions in their schools and hold relevant authorities accountable. "This will also allow us to bring in the community to be part of the monitoring of the projects that we do on the ground," she said. "With that, the community can hold us accountable for the money we have accessed from UBEC, and also the projects we're doing on the ground, as well as the quality of projects we're doing." She said the digital platform had been under development for more than a month, adding that SUBEB chairmen had been onboarded ahead of its full deployment in October.
The development is part of UBEC's broader shift towards a "whole school approach" to basic education interventions, under which states will be required to identify the comprehensive needs of individual schools before their action plans can be approved. Garba said the approach was intended to move the commission away from isolated projects, such as constructing classrooms or supplying furniture without addressing other essential requirements in the same school. "For any state to do renovation, you have to do a whole school approach. A whole school approach means, you take a school and you look at all the gaps. You don't just put in a furniture or you drop two blocks of classrooms and you leave because you want to give out awards. No, you have to take in all the comprehensive needs of that particular school," she said. She said where a school lacked fencing, toilets, furniture or computers, such needs would be incorporated into its intervention plan. Additional classrooms, she added, would also have to be matched with adequate toilet facilities based on projected enrolment.
Garba also announced a revision of the matching-grant formula to give states greater flexibility to deploy UBEC funds according to their specific education needs. She said the previous approach had largely focused on new infrastructure, even though some states now required funding for the renovation and improvement of existing schools. "The new formula allows each state to look at their own needs. If their needs on the ground is furniture, if their needs on the ground is renovating all schools to ensure that our schools now have fencing, have computers, have furniture, then they are allowed to do that," she said. She said the revised framework could also accommodate interventions such as enrolment materials and additional teachers where states identified increased enrolment as a priority.
The commission's move comes amid persistent challenges around access, infrastructure and learning outcomes in Nigeria's basic education sector. UNICEF estimates that 10.5 million children aged five to 14 are out of school in Nigeria, while learning assessments have continued to show significant gaps in foundational literacy and numeracy. The new roadmap, which replaces the existing 2021–2030 framework, is expected to provide a forward-looking framework for policy prioritisation, resource alignment, institutional coordination, monitoring and results-based accountability, while supporting the transition from "education for all" to "learning for all."
The digital workflow unveiled by Garba is designed to replace the largely manual process of accessing and managing UBEC intervention funds with an integrated workflow covering bid development, submission, review, approval and transmission of state proposals to the commission. She said the reform builds on the unified framework and reviewed guidelines introduced by the commission in 2025 to improve states' access to UBE funding and ensure that proposed interventions were linked to evidence-based priorities. According to her, all states adopted the framework and guidelines, while technical assistance provided by the commission enabled a significant number of states to access the UBE matching grant. "Building on this process, the commission has now upgraded the process into an integrated digital workflow that improves efficiency, transparency, timeliness, traceability and consistency across the fund access cycle," she said.
The workshop, which brought together SUBEB chairmen and UBEC directors, was designed to deepen the understanding of state officials on the reforms, obtain feedback on the digital workflow and agree on implementation modalities. The Dean of SUBEB Chairmen and Chairman of Kwara SUBEB, Prof. Shehu Adaramaja, said the consultation was critical to establishing a common direction for basic education delivery in the next decade, focusing on access, quality and system strengthening in line with the new management system. "In the next two days, we'll pay attention to all the strategies and the initiatives toward the development of a roadmap for the next 10 years on how to provide access, provide quality service, and of course, strengthen our systems in line with our new basic education management system," he said. Earlier, UBEC Director of Physical Planning, Arc. Nura Ibrahim, said the meeting would allow stakeholders to review and validate the proposed roadmap with their technical expertise and experience from implementing basic education programmes across the states.
Garba stressed that the success of the reforms would depend largely on strong ownership at state level, effective leadership, timely submission of data, disciplined planning and sustained collaboration between federal and state institutions. She urged chairmen and directors of planning, research and statistics of state universal basic education boards to actively participate in the process and share practical experiences from their respective states. The executive secretary said the meeting should produce consensus on system requirements, implementation sequencing, reporting obligations, capacity-building needs and coordination mechanisms needed to make the digital system and new roadmap practical tools for improving basic education delivery countrywide.
The new roadmap will formally commence in the first week of October and will guide basic education interventions for the next decade. For parents and communities across Nigeria, the BEAPMS platform represents an opportunity to see how funds allocated to their states are being used and to demand accountability for the quality of projects delivered in their children's schools. For UBEC, the reforms represent a significant shift in how the commission manages intervention funds and interacts with states, moving from a largely manual, infrastructure-focused approach to a digital, needs-based system that prioritises comprehensive school development. Whether the platform and the roadmap deliver on their promise will depend on the commitment of state governments, the capacity of SUBEBs to implement the new framework and the willingness of communities to engage with the monitoring process that UBEC has opened to them.
📩 Stone Reporters News | 🌍 stonereportersnews.com
✉️ info@stonereportersnews.com | 📘 Facebook: Stone Reporters News | 🐦 X (Twitter): @StoneReportNew | 📸 Instagram: @stonereportersnews
Add comment
Comments