The Senate has expanded the scope of its investigation into the Safe Schools Initiative (SSI) to include several key government agencies and granted its ad hoc committee an additional three weeks to complete the probe.
The expanded investigation will now cover the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND), Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, and the National Social Investment Programme Agency (NSIPA).
The decision followed a motion presented by the committee chairman, Senator Orji Uzor Kalu, who said the Safe Schools Initiative is closely linked to the activities of these agencies.
“Investigating the Safe Schools Initiative without reviewing these complementary bodies will result in fragmented legislative oversight,” Kalu said.
According to him, the committee will examine funding, accountability, operational challenges, infrastructure projects, student loan disbursements, school feeding programmes, and other educational intervention schemes managed by the affected agencies.
Kalu also requested more time to complete the assignment, explaining that the committee had yet to visit some important locations due to its workload.
“We’re supposed to submit our report, but there are four key areas that were not done. We need about two or three weeks to conclude our work,” he said.
The Senate approved the request through a voice vote, giving the committee three more weeks to submit its report.
The committee was initially set up in December 2025 to investigate the implementation of the Safe Schools Initiative, which was launched in 2014 following the abduction of the Chibok schoolgirls to improve security in schools across Nigeria.
