ABUJA, Federal Republic of Nigeria. Senate Committee on Education yesterday uncovered N9,982,258,479 extra allocation in the budget appropriation of the Education Ministry. The amount was tucked inside the budget of the agencies in the ministry as personnel costs. The lawmakers, who began the budget defence of the education sector yesterday, found out that the personnel costs of the agencies under the Education Ministry was unjustifiably too high in the 2016 budget appropriation bill, prompting the members to take closer look at the figures.
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It was discovered that personnel cost of the agencies rose from N88.1bn in 2015 to as high as N98.1bn in the 2016 estimate proposals. The rise in the total personnel costs of the agencies incidentally happened at a time a breakdown of their figures showed that individual personnel costs were declining. For instance, a breakdown of the figures showed that personnel budget of universities reduced by as much as N16.245bn, declining from N227.2bn in 2015 to N211bn in 2016.
In the same vein, colleges of education budget slide downward from N40.2bn in 2015 to N37.6bn, while polytechnics’ personnel cost, which was N61.44bn in 2015 was reduced to N58.23bn. However, while the ministry itself has its own budget reduced by N244.9m from N3.768bn in 2015 to N3.523bn in 2016, UNESCO Paris is the worst hit with the drastic reduction of its budget from N288.3bn in 2015 to N7.588bn in 2016. At the budget defence, which was conducted by the Senate Committee on Secondary School Education, Minister of State for Education, Prof. Anthony Anwuka, appeared in company of the Permanent Secretary, Mrs. Folasade Yemi-Esan. Anwuka made a presentation on the ministry’s budget performance last year.
He said, of the N483.183bn budgeted for education in 2015, only N13.279bn was released. He added that only 50 per cent of the N23.5bn, amounting to N11.9bn was released as capital budget. After the minister’s submissions, a member of the committee and Senate Chief Whip, Senator Olusola Adeyeye, queried the rationale behind the increase in only the budget of agencies by N10bn, while appropriation for universities reduced by as much N16bn. Adeyeye wondered why agencies, which were meant to support the institutions, should have their personnel budget increased by such a huge volume. He therefore demanded for 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 N10bn 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 N9bn 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.
“They were the ones that submitted their own personnel costs. It was not imposition,” she submitted. But both Adeyeye and the entire committee were not convinced by the claim that a typical Nigerian institution would deliberately cut its budget by as much as N16bn. Following this, 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. The budget defence continues today
Credit: National Mirror (Nigeria)
