Laments over the delay in producing the textbooks that were promised primary and junior secondary students
DAILY TIMES (Nigeria) [27/11/12]
By Chidi Okoye
The Federal Ministry of Education has sanctioned publishers who failed to supply textbooks and library resource materials to primary and junior secondary schools across the country “with a minimum clause''.
The Minister of State for Education, Nyesom Wike, gave the indication in Abuja on Monday while addressing the publishers.
He said that the publishing companies affected by the sanction were Evans Brothers, Universal Press Plc, Spectrum, Lantern, Macmillan, Learn Africa, and Africana First Publisher Plc.
“The Federal Executive Council emphasised in its meeting that, if we cannot deliver these books to Nigerians at the appropriate time, then there is no need in awarding the contracts,” he said. “They all signed that they are going to deliver the books within six weeks; it is more than eight weeks and the books have not be delivered.
Why should the government suffer for the inability of these contractors? Today you hear that government is not serious, government makes promises and government fails to keep their promises; now we are saying no, we cannot continue to do that. If we have made promises to Nigerians, then it is within our responsibility to make sure that they can see it.”
He added that contractors did not believe that the Federal Government could impose any sanction on them; this would also serve as a lesson to others.
Wike said that letters had been written to revoke their contract “with a minimum clause''.
“We have not cancelled their contracts; they would still supply the books to the schools,” he said. “If you do not deliver on time, then we will apply that clause that addresses if you did not deliver on time; because we have already written to Mr President to flag-off the distribution of the books on the November 30. So if they cannot deliver the books, then we are handicapped. But let it be known that it is not on the part of government that these promises are not fulfilled.”
Responding, Adesanya Adelekan, the Managing Director of MacMillan Publishing Company, who spoke for other publishers, said that they faced some constraints that prevented them from meeting the deadline.
“Some of these constraints are lack of local capacity, lack of raw materials to use for printing which needed to be imported and among others,” he said. “Paper is what we use to produce our books and papers are not available and as you are aware we have to import the papers. For those of us who produce abroad, it take at least three weeks and the period of importation takes five weeks and you add that to the period of shipment which is four weeks.”
He, however, said that the Nigerian Ports were also posing a challenge such as the delay of containers which would take at least three to four weeks to be cleared.
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