Buhari promises 50% increase in education budget, approves N8.5 billion for medical research

President Muhammadu Buhari has pledged that the Federal Government will increase its education funding by 50% in 2 years.

President Buhari disclosed this at the Global Education Summit in London, United Kingdom, on Wednesday, according to the News Agency of Nigeria.

In a document signed at the summit in London titled “Heads Of State Call To Action On Education Financing Ahead Of The Global Education Summit,” Buhari said Nigeria is aggressively committed to increasing domestic education funding.

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“We commit to progressively increase our annual domestic education expenditure by 50% over the next two years and up to 100% by 2025 beyond the 20% global benchmark,” he said.

The conference co-hosted by the Prime Minister of UK Boris Johnson and the President of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta seeks to ensure 5-year pledges in a bid to support GPE’s work to help transform the education system in up to 90 countries and territories.

Buhari joins Presidents Nana Akufo-Addo of Ghana; Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya; Lazarus Chakwera of Malawi and Faure Gnassingbé of Togo in the pledge to improve funding to education.

Buhari approves N8.5bn for research in medicine, others

Executive Secretary of Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND), Prof. Suleiman Bogoro, revealed that the FG’s approved N8.5 billion for research in Medicine and other areas under the National Research Fund (NRF) scheme.

Bogoro said, “With your support, I made a case to the board of trustees to increase the NRF research grants. Initially, we had a seed money of N3 billion, which got exhausted and N1 billion was added between 2016 and 2019.

When I came, I decided to revolutionise it and I said it is not a question of seed money, let it be annual money and that is why I made a case for N5 billion in 2019 alone and in 2020 we raised it to N7.5 billion.

The President has approved another N7.5 billion but, guess what, with additional N1 billion that we intend to use for groundbreaking research around medicine even in respect of the COVID-19 challenge.”

He disclosed this at a workshop for Directors of Research and Development of public universities in Nigeria on Wednesday in Abuja.

He added that this was part of the FG’s plans to support the Nigerian Medical Research Institute (NMIR) for local vaccine production.