Katsina To Build 123 Schools, Renovate 68 Others

The Katsina State authorities is to physique 123 schools, renovate 68 and grow 69 others to code captious infrastructure gaps successful the acquisition assemblage successful the state.

The commissioner for Basic and Secondary Education, Zainab Musa Musawa, disclosed this connected Friday portion defending her ministry’s 2026 fund connection earlier the commissioner for Budget and Economic Planning, Malik Anas, who chaired the pre-budget defence session.

According to Musawa, the information emerged from community-driven reports and method assessments conducted by the ministry.

She explained that owed to the tremendous fiscal implications, the ministry had to signifier the projects into 2 stages to guarantee due execution and accountability.

“We person divided the requests into 2 phases. In the archetypal phase, we are proposing the operation of 58 caller schools astatine an estimated outgo of ₦37.9 billion, the enlargement of 34 schools astatine N8.4 cardinal and the renovation of 24 schools astatine ₦4.6 billion. Altogether, this amounts to astir N51 cardinal for the archetypal phase,” Musawa said. The 2nd signifier would instrumentality attraction of the rest.

She emphasised that the prioritisation of schools for involution was based connected the urgent request to grow entree to acquisition and supply conducive learning environments, peculiarly successful communities wherever existing schools are overcrowded oregon structurally weak.

The commissioner noted that immoderate peculiar schools, including the School for the Deaf successful Malumfashi and the School for the Blind, person besides been captured successful the connection for contiguous attention, fixed their accordant request for authorities intervention.

Responding, the commissioner for Budget and Economic Planning, Malik Anas, commended the ministry for its elaborate presumption but stressed the value of data-driven decision-making successful determining which communities should payment first.

Anas urged the acquisition ministry to guarantee that each requests for caller schools are justified by verifiable data, including the region betwixt projected and existing schools, pupil enrollment figures, and colonisation projections.

“We indispensable beryllium guided by close information to debar duplication and to guarantee that resources spell wherever they are genuinely needed. Every assemblage wants development, but our readying has to beryllium realistic and sustainable,” Anas said.

Musawa besides revealed that her ministry is presently moving with UNICEF and the Federal Institute of Education to digitise schoolhouse data, transitioning from manual records to a strategy that captures idiosyncratic pupil information.

She added that the caller integer database would assistance the authorities to place precedence areas and program much efficaciously for teacher deployment, infrastructure and information challenges.

She further lamented that galore schools, particularly successful frontline section authorities areas specified arsenic Faskari, stay closed owed to insecurity, forcing students to relocate to neighbouring communities.