Abuja - The senate has 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.
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.
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