It’s getting bigger. What started as a probe into the Safe Schools Initiative has just turned into a full-blown audit of Nigeria’s entire education intervention funding.

The Senate on Tuesday said, “we’re not done yet” and gave its ad hoc committee investigating the Safe Schools Initiative an extra three weeks to finish the job. But that’s not all - they’ve also widened the net massively.

According to cbinews.tv, the Red Chamber has now pulled in some heavyweights: TETFund, NELFUND, UBEC, the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, and NSIPA. The idea? To finally connect the dots between school safety, student loans, infrastructure funding, and all those social investment programmes.

The motion was moved by Senator Orji Uzor Kalu (APC, Abia North), who chairs the committee. He told his colleagues that you simply can’t investigate Safe Schools in isolation.

And he has a point. As he put it, student security, education funding, and social welfare schemes are “deeply interwoven.” If you only look at one piece, you get a fragmented picture.

So what will the expanded committee be looking at now?

Financial flows and accountability across all the agencies,

How school feeding, emergency relief for displaced students, and education rehabilitation funds were spent under Humanitarian Affairs and NSIPA,

TETFund’s security and infrastructure projects in tertiary institutions,

How NELFUND is actually disbursing student loans, who’s getting it, and how efficient is it?

UBEC’s interventions in basic education.

Kalu was quite frank with his colleagues. He said four key areas were still outstanding and they needed more time due to the sheer workload. Senate President Godswill Akpabio put it to a voice vote, and it was unanimously approved.

A quick reminder of why this matters: The committee was inaugurated back in December 2025 amid fresh outrage over school attacks, including the abduction of 25 female students from Government Girls Comprehensive Secondary School in Maga, Kebbi State, where bandits reportedly killed the vice principal.

The Safe Schools Initiative itself was launched way back in May 2014 after the Chibok abduction of 276 schoolgirls. It was meant to be a big partnership between the FG, the UN and the private sector to fortify schools in conflict zones.

But where has the money gone? That’s the big question. The committee has already been grilling agencies over the ₦15bn released in 2023, with the Police taking ₦6.225bn, NSCDC getting ₦3.362bn, Defence Headquarters ₦2.250bn, and the Education Ministry ₦519m. The DSS allocation wasn’t even publicly disclosed.

There are also big questions around consultancy payments and alleged irregularities. The committee has ordered the Safe Schools Financing Office to submit a full, reconciled breakdown of every kobo spent from the CBN Trust Fund account.

For context, National Coordinator Hajia Halima Iliya had earlier told the panel that funding came from everywhere - $10m each from the FG and Nigerian business leaders, $1m from AfDB, €2m from Germany, $4m from Norway via UNICEF, plus support from USAID, Qatar Foundation and other UN agencies.

Now, with this expanded mandate, Nigerians will finally get to see a proper, joined-up report on whether these billions are actually keeping our children safe in school.

Credit: cbinews.tv

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