The Nigeria house of Senate discover N10bn hidden in 2016 Education budget

THE Senate Committee on
Education, yesterday, uncovered
N9,982,258,479 hidden in the budget of
parastatals by the Federal Ministry of
Education.
The committee, which discovered the
amount at the commencement of its 2016
budget defence, said the amount was
hidden in the ministry’s parastatals.
The parastatals allocation for
the year,
according to the Senate Committee,
increased at geometric progression by
almost N10 billion while the entire
personnel cost for the ministry and all its
subsidiaries including schools and
colleges declined drastically when
compared to that of last year.
To this end, the committee chairman,
Senator Aliyu Wamakko, ruled that the
permanent secretary and the ministry
should go back to the drawing board and
come up with a more sensible overhead
cost, saying its discovery was that the
huge sum was deliberately hidden under
parastatals’ personnel cost.
As seen, the ministry’s parastatals’
personnel cost rose from N88.1 billion in
2015 to as high as N98.1 billion in 2016
estimate proposals while the personnel
budget of universities reduced by as much
as N16.245 billion, declining from N227.2
billion in 2015 to N211.0 billion in 2016.
Similarly, colleges of education budget
decreased from N40.2 billion in 2015 to
N37.6 billion, while polytechnics’
personnel cost which previously stood at
N61.44 billion in 2015 was trimmed to
N58.23 billion just as unity colleges’
budget had been cut from N288.7billion
to N7.588 billion.
While the ministry itself reduced its
budget by only N244.9 million from
N3.768 billion in 2015 to N3.523 billion in
2016, UNESCO Paris was the worst hit
with the drastic reduction of its budget
from N288.3 billion in 2015 to N7.588
billion in 2016.
Minister of State for Education, Professor
Anthony Anwuka,who appeared before the
Senate Committee on Secondary School
Education for budget defence, in company
of the ministry’s Permanent Secretary,
Mrs. Folasade Yemi-Esan, gave account
of the education budget performance in
2015.
He said N483.183 billion budget was
earmarked for education in 2015, with
only N13.279 billion released.
Anwuka added that only 50 per cent of
N23.5 billion, amounting to N11.9 billion
was released for capital education.
However, after his submission, a member
of the committee and Senate Chief Whip,
Senator Olusola Adeyeye, queried the
rationale behind the increase in only the
budget of parastatals by only about N10
billion while the budget of universities
reduced by as much N16 billion.
Adeyeye wondered while parastatals
which were meant to support the
institutions should have their personnel
budget increased by such a huge volume.
He, therefore, demanded for an
explanation.
“If you look at personnel cost on page 28,
almost every sub-sector of the ministry
lost some money except parastatals that
got increase. What is special about the
parastatals that they gained more than
universities, colleges, polytechnics and
unity schools? Why should the parastatals
that are meant to serve them keep
growing in personnel cost?” Adeyeye
queried.
The minister pushed the question to the
permanent secretary who for want of
expression said they would go back to
look into it.
She said: “We will go back and find the
aggregate of the parastatals put together
so that we can look into the details and
find out those that are increasing and the
difference between them.”
Dissatisfied by that response, Adeyeye
insisted that the ministry must explain
how a whopping sum of about N10 billion
was added to the parastatals’ personnel
budget at the expense of institutions
which actually need budget increase.
He said: “The budget of the parastatals
have N9 billion extra while others lose
money. We can’t have a situation where
schools are losing money and parastatals
are gaining. How did parastatals have
such a quantum leap?”
Responding again, Yemi-Esan said the
reduction in personnel budgets of schools
and colleges was not imposed on them.
Rather, she said it was what they
submitted that the ministry collated and
submitted as their personnel costs.