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The management of the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) has allayed the fears of private school owners that the ongoing National Personnel Audit (NPA) is meant for taxation.
The UBEC management, led by the chairman of the board of trustees, Prof. Adamu Kyauka, the executive secretary of the commission, Dr. Bobboyi Hamid, and chairman, Lagos State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB), Mr. Wahab Alawiye-King, told the school proprietors that the 2022 school census has nothing to do with government’s intent to increase tax.
To allay the fear of school owners, a meeting was held in Lagos that attracted representatives of the National Association of Proprietors of Private Schools (NAPPS), Association for Formidable Education Development (AFED) and Muslim School Proprietors Association (MUSPASS).
Bobboyi assured the private school owners that the 2022 NPA was not meant for taxation purposes but a census to gather data that would enable government plan for the future.
He urged the associations to appeal to their members to open their doors to enumerators and also explain to them the benefits of the school census.
The UBEC boss said private schools were driving education in Nigeria with large numbers of pupils, thus the need to capture their data, stating that the school census is backed by law.
His words: “The 2018 school census exercise gave us an idea of how many pupils, teachers, non-teaching staff and facilities in public and private schools. The data collection is in the interest of stakeholders.”
Kyauka said the opposition of private schools to the NPA was twofold, arising from lack of sensitization and expected benefits that would accrue to them.
Said Kyauka: “Private schools will cooperate if they know the benefits from the school census. Regular meetings with their leaders will have solved some of the fears expressed by the private school operators.”
NAPPS representative at the meeting, Dr. Comfort Otegbeye, said members got information that the form and data collection is about taxation and that some enumerators took pictures which sent wrong signal to the proprietors.
Otegbeye asked if NAPPS could help carry out the exercise and pass the data to UBEC officials for compilation. She advised that early sensitization would solve the problems been encountered by the enumerators with private school owners.
The president of AFED, Mr. Orji Emmanuel, said stakeholders were not carried along and that members were also not informed about the exercise by their various national bodies.
He assured UBEC officials that AFED members would be educated about the important of the school census and the need to grant the enumerators access to their schools for data collection.
Representative of MUSPASS, Muhammed Babatunde, said there are about 21 registered associations for private schools in Lagos and that he is not sure the various bodies were aware of the exercise.
He noted: “In 2018 and 2019, we took part in the exercise and it went smoothly. Let the relevant stakeholders be carried along.”
The 2022 NPA Team Leader, Mr. Alabi Asaju, said since June 6, when the exercise-commenced private schools have not been cooperating with the enumerators posted to Lagos.
“They denied our field officers from entering their schools to carry out the exercise. UBEC posted 177 enumerators to Lagos and we have 28,000 public and private schools in the state. We have covered 144 primary schools and 144 junior schools.”
