Akwa Ibom State government has not accessed N1,721,001,320.95 matching grant from Universal Basic Education Commission, UBEC, for three years now.
A breakdown shows that N434,658,131.80 was not accessed between 2015 and 2016 while N1,286,343,183.55 was unaccessed in 2017.
A report obtained from Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) shows that N67,191,745,882.90 was not accessed by the 36 states and Federal Captial Territory (FCT) in the country from 2015-2016.
Though the report covers from 2005 to April 30, 2018, most states that paid their counterpart funding had cleared a backlog of grants leaving a few with little to access.
From 2015 to 2017, the report indicates that Ebonyi and Ogun States have the highest unaccessed grant of N4,157,424,266.01 while Gombe, Jigawa and Rivers have the lowest amount of N1.38.
The huge accumulation of the unaccessed grant may not be unconnected with the inability of the states to pay their counterpart funding to the commission before they could access the grant.
In 2017, Akwa Ibom government obtained approval from the state House of Assembly to collect N1.9 billion loan facility to pay and benefit from the matching grant.
A top government functionary questioned the financial wisdom of the state government in collecting a loan of N1.9 billion to access N1.7 billion from the commission.
Straightnews discovered that primary school teachers in the state who retired several years ago are being owed arrears of pensions and gratuities due to the politics of associated with irregular payment of counterpart funding to access the grant.
