Reps Query N1bn Vote For Travelling In Education Ministry

The House of Representatives on Tuesday queried the “wasteful” N1bn vote of the Ministry of Education for travels and conferences in this  year’s budget, calling for immediate review of the proposal.

At a 2014 budget defence session with the Minister of Education, Mr. Nyeson  Nwike, 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.”

He added, “The Nigerian Union of Teachers, even ASUU members, have complained that if 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 get, and it can be improved on if we pay adequate attention to teachers’ 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, the minister said he was as worried as the lawmakers. 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.

Nwike 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.

“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,” he stated.

The total budget of the education sector this year is N493.45bn compared to the N437.47bn voted in 2013. Source: PUNCH Newspaper