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.
Committee chairman, Senator Aliyu Wamakko, therefore, 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.
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.
According to him, N483.183 billion budget was earmarked for education in 2015, but only N13.279 billion was released.
In his reaction, 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.
“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.
In her response, Permanent Secretary of the ministry, Mrs. Folasade Yemi-Esan 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.”
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