By Olusegun Lawrence The Senate on Monday questioned an increment of N10 billion in the 2016 Personnel Proposal of parastatals under the Ministry of Education.
The Chief Whip, Prof. Olusola Adeyeye, noted that the parastatals were allocated N88.199 billion in 2015, wondering why it has now been increased to N98. 181billion.
He made the discovery during the budget presentation of the Ministry of Education before the Senate Committee on Basic and Secondary Education in Abuja.
Senator Aliku Wamako, chairman of the committee decried reduction in personnel proposal of schools while parastatals are being allocated more money.
He directed the ministry to return at a later date to give a better explanation on why parastatals were given priority over schools.
His words, “We will give you time to get us detailed answer because I am not comfortable with the answer given.
“Find time and give us detailed information about this. This must be addressed carefully.”
Justifying the presentation, the Permanent Secretary of the ministry, Mrs Folasade Yemi-Esan, explained that the figures presented by the ministry were submitted by the various parastatals and institutions in the ministry.
According to her, “The variance depends on the number of people that still exist in IPPIS.
“So, it is an automatic thing that as people retire, the balance comes down. So, if they are not replaced by new staff, then we have this variance, it is not that we lost some money.
“This is an aggregate of all the parastatals, we will check to know which one has the increase or if there is marginal increase across board because what we have done is to put together all the parastatals.
“Having said that, this was not imposed on the different universities and the polytechnics. They were the ones that submitted their personnel cost, so it is not an imposition.
“It is what they submitted we collated. There is no loss of money here.”
