The House of Representatives on Tuesday queried the “wasteful” N1bn votes of the Federal Ministry of Education on travels and conferences in this year’s budget.
The lawmakers called for immediate review of the proposal.
This issue came up while the Minister of Education, Mr. Nyeson Wike, was defending the budget proposal of the ministry before the lawmakers on Tuesday.
The members of the Committee on Education observed that the N1bn voted for travels was 50 per cent of the N2bn allocated for training of teachers.
The Chairman of the committee, Mr. Aminu Suleiman, described the proposal for travels as “irrelevant and adds little value.”
Suleiman added, “The Nigerian Union of Teachers, even ASUU members, have complained that the money budgeted for training and retraining of ministry staff yearly is enough to train and retrain all the teachers in this country.
“We should be concerned more about the quality of education our children are getting, and it can be improved if we pay adequate attention to teacher training.”
Another member, Mr. Jerry Alagboso, noted that the allocation to the ministry to run its internal matters, jumped from N70bn in 2013 to N90bn this year.
But Wike said he was also worried over the issue. He said he wished he had the powers to re-allocate some of the funds to areas of urgent importance.
He blamed the Ministry of Finance and the Budget Office of the Federation for allocating the funds.
Wike cited the provision for capital projects in the education sector, which he said had dropped from N71.23bn in 2013 to N49.53bn in 2014.
Wike said, “This is a significant drop of about 30.46 per cent.
“This sharp drop will surely impose constraints and challenges on the ministry in the implementation of its policy programmes.”
The total budget of the education sector this year is N493.45bn, compared to the N437.47bn it got in 2013.
While this implied an overall increase, members observed that in terms of distribution to areas of need, some allocations were slashed.
Meanwhile, the House Committee on Finance, commended the Central Bank of Nigeria at a separate budget defence meeting for making its remittances to the Federation Account regularly.
The Chairman of the committee, Dr. Abdulmumin Jibril, said he was impressed that the bank rarely failed to make remittances.
“The National Assembly will continue to commend the CBN for the fiscal discipline, which it has been demonstrating and for the good work it has been doing for this country,” Jibrin added.
Jibrin made the commendation after CBN’s Deputy Governor, Corporate Services, Alhaji Suleiman Barau, informed lawmakers that its remittances had risen from around N64.122bn in 2011 to over N80bn in 2012.
The development came as the House Committee on Public Accounts asked the National Planning Commission to account for the N400m it reportedly collected from the Service Wide Vote in 2012.
The Chairman of the committee, Mr. Solomon Olamilekan, said the money was paid to the commission by the budget office.
But members were taken aback at a session with officials of the commission when the Secretary, Mr. Ntufam Fidel-Ugbo, did not give satisfactory answers on how the money was utilised.
The committee directed him to provide details on how the money was spent.
The committee also summoned the Director General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, Mr. Patrick Apkobolokemi, in connection with alleged “reckless” spending of public funds.
On its part, the Chairman of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, Alhaji Ahmadu, dismissed the claim of the budget office that the agency collected N65m from the SWV in October 2009. Click to signup for FREE news updates, latest information and hottest gists everyday
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