CSOs Tackle FCT Board Chairman Over Fee Racketeering
BY TEMI OHAKWE, ABUJA – A coalition of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) have faulted alleged fees racketeering in public secondary schools in the Federal Capital Territory.
The CSOs equally faulted the reasons adduced by the Chairman of the Federal Capital Territory’s Secondary Education Board (FCT SEB), Alhaji Yahaya Musa Mohammed over the fees racketeering.
They vowed that they would explore every available legal channel to expose the corruption and filth behind the illegally imposed N2,500 fees on the already impoverished, long-suffering parents of indigent students in the nation’s capital.
The CSOs made up of the Initiative for Citizens Rights, Accountability and Development (ICRAD) and Civil Society Action Coalition on Education for All (CSACEA), said the position of Mohammed on the mandatory N1,500 fee imposed on students have raised more questions than answers.
The groups which made their positions known while chatting with Journalists in Abuja, stressed that the fees forced on indigent students and their poor parents run contrary to legal enactments such as the Universal Basic Education (UBE) Act, relevant Public Procurement Laws (i.e. the Public Procurement Act) as well as the Treasury Single Account (TSA) Regulations which are extant laws that ordinarily ought to govern such levies if it was actually deemed necessary and fair to be imposed in the first place”
ICRAD had in a petition addressed to the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission (ICPC), called for a probe of what it described as the “illegal imposition of a mandatory, unauthorised and illegal payment of N1,500 PTA levy” per annum on all students in JS 3, SS 1, SS 2 & SS 3 in the FCT by the Board.
Following the outrage that greeted the imposition of the fee, the FCT SEB chairman, who was on a radio programme ‘WE 106.3 FM’, Abuja, claimed that the money was agreed upon by schools Parent Teacher Associations (PTAs) to ensure online classes as a result of COVID-19.
But listeners on the programme were particularly miffed and descended hard on Mohammed when he said that the “N1,500 levy is a paltry sum” for which parents should not complain or make a fuss about.
Reacting to the development, the FCT focal person of the Civil Society Action Coalition on Education for All (CSACEA), Abdullahi Saleh, vehemently condemned the statement by the SEB Chairman, saying it was completely out of touch with the economic realities and plight of parents who send their children/wards to public schools.
Saleh said; “You, see, that is where I have a problem with public office holders like Alhaji Mohammed, because I had a child in a public school in the FCT and when I went there for PTA meetings I realized that mostly working class people who earn meagre salaries are the ones who send their kids there”.
Continuing, Saleh challenged the SEB boss, his colleagues within the Board and the FCT Education Secretariat to go to Gwagwalada, Abaji or Bwari where majority of people that live in such communities are into farming.
In his words; “Now this is the farming season and they are in their farms with no other sources of income. How do you equate them with people that live in the city? What percentage of people that live in the FCT especially in the suburbs are workers with regular sources of income for you to say that N1,500 is nothing?”
Apparently, trying to establish a nexus or link between the controversial levy and corruption, the CSACEA Chief suggested that there might be elite collaboration and/or manipulation of the poor, disadvantaged, disempowered and downtrodden parents in the FCT when he said that “when I go for PTA meetings, few people who drive big cars make decisions on behalf of the vast majority of parents who are mostly poor”.
Saleh, while condemning the statement by Mohammed to the effect that the amount levied was too paltry an amount for people to complain about, said; “corruption is the bane of all the efforts geared towards stemming the out of school children menace in the country”.
Also speaking, Mr. Oman Dave, an education-focused civil society group on the aegis of ‘Edu-Radio’ took strong exception to more levies being “extorted” from parents most of whom he noted are already poor enough.
He said; “There is a law for the punishment of people who extort money from parents/students. For instance, the penalty for parents who keep their children out of school under the UBE Act is only N2000 and the reason this amount was kept this low is because the same government realises that these parents are very poor.
“Is it the same poor parents that you are extorting by imposing an additional unlawful levy of N1,500?” he queried.
Similarly, ICRAD’S Executive Director, Mr. Hassan Luqman Olayiwola, described the position of FCT Board chairman as “damning inconsistencies, contradictory statements and plain falsehoods put out.
While depreciating the FCT SEB Chairman’s statement to the effect that the N1,500 unlawful levy was too paltry an amount for parents to complain about, Olayiwola said such an unfortunate statement is hardly surprising as “it is indicative of one who is detached from and out of touch with the grim economic realities of people he is supposed to be serving in the first place”.
