2016 budget: N9.9bn uncovered in Education’s ministry

…NMA alleges N60bn missing

By Odunewu Segun

A sum of N9, 982,258,470 was recently discovered hidden under parastatal’s personnel cost in the 2016 budget by the Federal Ministry of Education, the Senate Committee on education has disclosed.

National Daily gathered that the ministry when queried could not offer any reason for the said amount.

The committee queried  why the parastatals allocation for 2016 increase by almost N10 billion while the entire personnel cost of the ministry and all its subsidiaries including schools and colleges declined sharply in comparison to last year figure.

This prompted the chairman of the committee, Senator Aliyu Wamakko, to order the permanent secretary and the ministry to take a second look at the figure and come up with a more reasonable overhead cost.

A breakdown of the budgetary figure for the Ministry of Education showed that 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 N222.7 billion in 2015 to N211.0 billion in 2016.

Also, 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.

Meanwhile, the Nigerian Medical Association has urged the National Assembly to review and review the allocation to the ministry following an allegation that about N60 billion is missing from the 2016 budget for health.

The Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) expressed shock that N60 billion, equivalent of 1% of consolidated revenue guaranteed by the National Health Act to fund basic health is missing from the 2016 budget.

In a recent statement, President of the NMA, Dr. Kayode Obembe said President Muhammadu Buhari’s N6.08 trillion budgets only provides N1, 448 per capita health spending, lower than the N1, 546 per capita spending in 2015, compared with a recommendation of N6, 908 by the World Health Organisation.

Obembe stated that it was a sharp departure from the prescribed 15% of the national budget for health made in 2001 in a meeting of African Heads of States and Government which Nigeria hosted in Abuja.

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The NMA therefore, called on the National Assembly to “urgently review and revise the paltry allocation of N221.7 billion to the health ministry in the 2016 Appropriation Bill.”