The Executive Secretary of Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), Dr. Hamid Bobboyi, said the commission has distributed over 129 million copies of free textbooks in the core subjects to beneficiaries of basic education in the country.
Dr Bobboyi who stated this in the UBEC News Magazine, said the gesture was one of the provisions of the Universal Basic Education programmes.
“Since 2005 that the disbursement of the intervention commenced, millions of instructional materials have been injected into the system. To be specific, between 2010 to 2014 the commission has procured and distributed over 129,000,000 copies of Mathematics, English studies, Basic Science and Technology, Social Studies as well as library resources materials to basic schools,” he said.
According to him, this activity was carried out in collaboration with states and publishers as the principal agents of the project.
He said several strategies were adopted to ensure that the books were distributed and utilized, adding that monitoring exercise was carried out by the staff of the commission as well as independent monitors.
He insisted that the results the commission received indicated the availability of the textbooks in schools and that as a result, many states have achieved the target ratio of one pupil to a textbook in the core subjects being provided by the Federal Government.
While admitting that the initiative has come with some challenges such as the textbooks being found in the market, he said the commission, in collaboration with State Universal Basic Education Boards (SUBEBs) and security agencies, has always addressed the issues.
He said the commission is more focused than ever to ensure that the goal and objectives of the Federal Government’s free textbook initiative are met.
