By Olusegun Lawrence The Minister of Health, Prof Isaac Adewole has told the Senate Committee on Health that the 2016 health sector budget before it is a fake document hence, it should be discarded.
Prof Adewole who appeared before the committee on Monday to defend his ministry’s budget shocked the committee members when he said the budget had been distorted.
He however promised to submit new budget proposal of the ministry to the Committee on Tuesday.
Apparently shocked, the Chairman of the Committee, Senator Lanre Tejuosho, quickly resolved to executive session.
Tejuosho said,”Honourable minister, we need to have an executive session. You said about this budget that public health is not there. Obviously, the budget we are looking at now is not your own.”
In his response, Minister said, “yes, it’s not. We’ll submit the revised document tomorrow (today). It will be an updated version of what you have.”
The minister informed the lawmakers that there were some issues on which conclusion had not been reached by the ministry and yet allocations had been made to them without the ministry’s knowledge.
According to Adewole, the provisions of the budget before the National Assembly was in contrast with the priorities of the health sector as contained in the original budget it prepared adding that some of the votes earmarked by the ministry for some activities had been re-distributed while some important fields in the sector had been excluded.
The Minister also disclosed that State House Clinic to which N3.9 billion had been allocated in the budget at the expense of other hospitals put together which got far less allocations, is not under the supervision of the Ministry of Health.
“In the revised budget as re-submitted, N15.7 billion for capital allocation has been moved to other areas. Some allocations made are not in keeping with our priorities.
“There is nothing allocated to public health and family health. Over the last two years, nothing has been done on HIV.
”We have to look into the details of the budget and re-submit it to the committee.
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