The Federal Capital Territory Minister (FCT), Nyesom Wike has said that his administration has committed a total sum of $1,045,176,470 billion approximately N177 billion to the development of infrastructures in the education sector.

He said that this, includes the N3,500,000,000.00 billion counterpart funding from the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), bringing the total commitment of infrastructural development to approximately N177,000,000,000.00 billion.

This disclosure was made in the faraway Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where he was represented by the FCT Minister of State, Dr Mariya Mahmoud, at the sixth International Conference on Learning Cities.

The Minister explained that Abuja’s annual budget for the development of education has surpassed the UNESCO benchmark of 26 per cent.

Wike said, “A total of 21 primary and junior secondary schools were renovated completely, while a total of 30 senior secondary schools were also established”.

According to the Minister, other investments, ” include the tertiary education sector, adding that the FCT Administration has committed the sum of N14,529,622,993 billion for the completion and launch of FCT University, Abaji.

“UNESCO generally recommends that member nations have a budgetary allocation benchmark of at least 26 per cent to education.

“This benchmark is intended to ensure that countries can adequately address the needs of their education system such as teachers, training, infrastructure development and educational technology.

“It might interest my audience to know that Abuja’s annual budget for education surpasses the UNESCO benchmark”.