A FRESH controversy is brewing over the 2016 Appropriation Bill President Muhammadub Buhari submitted to the National Assembly.
The Senate Committee on Education yesterday alleged that during its scrutiny of the budget , it discovered that the provision for the education sector was inflated by N10 billion.
There had been a controversy over the budget with allegations that the document, submitted by Buhari to a joint session of the legislature last month, was missing or that a “fake” version was submitted to the lawmakers.
Experts have also criticised the heavy reliance on borrowing and pronouncements by the president that retrieved looted funds would form part of the revenue to drive the proposals in the face of dwindling oil revenue on which the country’s economy had relied over the years even though some others hailed it for the tilt towards capital expenditure.
At the budget-defence session with the committee, the Minister of State for Education, Prof. Anthony Anwuka, was dumbfounded when confronted with questions on how the personnel budget for pararastatals under the ministry was increased from N88,199,311,758 billion in 2015 to N98,181,570,237 billion in the 2016 budget document.
Unable to explain the anomaly, the minister simply claimed ignorance of the padded budget and asked the Senate committee to take the matter up with the Permanent Secretary, Mrs. Folasade Yemi-Esan.
The Chief Whip of the Senate, Olusola Adeyeye, who is a member of the committee had drawn the attention of other members of the committee to the fact that in 2015 personnel cost of parastatals in the ministry amounted to N88,119,758 pointing out that it was increased to N98,181,570,237 in this year’s budget document.
According to him, this was the only sub-head under which allocation was so increased, a development he disclosed as suspicious.
Stunned by the revelation, Chairman of the Committee and former Governor of Sokoto State, Aliyu Wamakko, quickly asked Anwuka to explain the cause of the padding.
The minister, claimed that he was not part of the preparation of the budget document. He diplomatically requested Wamakko to direct the question to the permanent secretary.
In a failed attempt to defend the padding, Yemi-Esan said: “The variants, it depends on the number of people that still exist on the IPPIS. So, it’s an automatic thing. As people retire, automatically, the balance comes down. So, if they are not replaced by new staff then we will have this variant. So, it’s not that we lost some money. If during the year, a number of people have retired, then the balance at the end of the year will be reduced.
“This is just an aggregation of all the parastatals. So, we will look at it and see which ones because it’s off hand now, I don’t know which ones had the increase or if there is a marginal increase across board. Because what we have done here is to put together all the parastatals.
But we can look at the details and find out which ones are increasing. But having this was not something that was imposed on the universities or polytechnics. They were the ones that submitted their personnel cost. It is not an imposition. It is what each university submitted that we collated and put together.”
Not satisfied with Yemi-Esan’s response, the committee directed the ministry to reappear and make a proper presentation to explain the padded budget.
Wamakko declared:”Permanent Secretary, what you are saying is not enough. Maybe you need to be given time to give us the true position because the issue involved is enormous. I need a good answer … I am not happy with the answer given.”
