Libya’s education minister jailed over textbook scandal

Libya’s education minister has been sentenced to three and a half years in prison for corruption charges leading to a textbook shortage in 2021, reports the Arab weekly. 

Moussa al-Megarief was also fined 1,000 dinars and stripped of his civil rights during the time of his detention and a year afterwards, the attorney general announced on March 16th. 

The former minister of the government of unity stood accused of “violating the principle of equity”, and “favouritism in contract management…over the printing of the textbooks”.

Back in 2021, a shortage of textbooks forced parents to buy photocopies in a country where textbooks are meant to be made freely available by the public school system. 

As a result, the court opened an investigation over Megarief’s management of the “contractual procedures for the printing of textbooks and the reasons behind this shortage”.

This led to his placement in detention as part of the investigation into “negligence in the exercise of his function”.

Later on, the court released Megarieff due to lack of evidence, as he returned to his position as education minister. 

According to the minister, the textbook shortage was due to the unification of the school curriculum across Lybia’s three provinces causing payment to suppliers to be delayed. 

According to a 2024 report, schooling conditions represent a significant challenge for Lybian authorities, with around 160,000 children and 5,600 teachers in need of support related to the quality or access to education. 

This is only complicated by the fact that the country is still divided between two competing administrations, the Government of National Unity (GNU) based in the western province of Tripoli, which maintains UN recognition as Libya’s official government, and the parliamentary government in the east. 

The Arab Weekly, REACH, Maghrebi