N9,982,258,479 obscured in the budget of parastatals by the Federal Ministry of Education was uncovered by the Senate Committee on Education on the 1st of February, 2016.
The Federal Ministry of Education reflected the following as compared to 2015 budget.
- University personnel budget reduced from N227.2 billion in 2015 to N211.0 billion 2016.
- College of Education budget decreased from N40.2 billion in 2015 to N37.6 billion.
- Polytechnics personnel cost decreased from N61.44 billion in 2015 to N58.23 billion.
- Unity colleges which previously stood at N288.7 billion in 2015 was trimmed to N7.538 billion.
- The ministry parastatals' personnel cost rose from N88.1 billion in 2015 to as high as N98.1 billion in 2016.
- The ministry's itself decreased its budget from 3.768 billion in 2015 to N3.523 billion in 2016.
The account of the budget was given before the senate committee on secondary school education by the ministry of state for education, Prof. Anthony Anwuka for project defence in company of the ministry's permanent secretary, Mrs Folasade Yemi-Esan.
Anwuka also revealed that only N13.279 billion was released out of the total N483.183 billion that was earmarked for education in 2015.
However, Senator Olusola Adeyeye, a member of the committee and Senate Chief Whip after the submission of the budget, queried the rationale behind the increase in only the budget of parastatals which were meant to support the institutions by about N10 billion. But due to the response of the permanent secretary which was to go back and look into it, the permanent secretary and the ministry were told to go back to the drawing board and come up with a more sensible overhead cost. This ruling was made by the Senate Committee chairman, Aliyu Wamakko.
He also added that its discovery was that, the huge sum was deliberately hidden under parastatals personnel cost.
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