While appearing before the Senate committee on Health to defend its 2016 budget yesterday February 8th, the Minister of Health, Isaac Adewole, said that his ministry's budget proposal submitted to the Senate is different from the one they wrote and sent to the budget office.
Few weeks ago, it was brought to the fore– some questionable appropriations in the 2016 budget of the Federal Ministry of Health.
One of such strange appropriations was the amount earmarked for computer printers which was surprisingly more than what was allocated for the purchase of computers.
While N297,354,194 was budgeted for the purchase of computer printers, N6,663,104 was earmarked for the purchase of computers while another N29, 364, 034 was allocated for office stationery and computer consumables.
But during yesterday’s budget defence session, the former Vice Chancellor of the University of Ibadan informed the senators that strange figures were somehow, smuggled into the budget.
The minister told the committee that allocations were made on some health issues which were still being deliberated upon by the ministry.
He said the provisions of the budget before the National Assembly was a far cry from the priorities of the health sector as contained in the original budget it prepared and submitted to the budget office.
“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. This was not what we submitted. We’ll submit another one. We don’t want anything foreign to creep into that budget. What we submitted is not there. We have not reached that stage and we find the money there.”
Adewole urged the Senate Committee to throw out the budget proposal before while his ministry drafts a new estimate to be re-submitted on Tuesday (today).
The Minister informed the members of the committee that the programmes of the health sector for the year would be included in the new budget proposal.
Following the revelation made by Prof Adewole, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Senator Lanre Tejuosho, convened a closed door session with the minister to have private discussions.
Tejuosho said it was apparent that the budget is not that of the ministry, while noting that it would be out of place to work on a budget that had already been disowned by the minister.
The Senator 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.”
Adewole responded saying: “Yes, it’s not. We’ll submit the revised document tomorrow (today). It will be an updated version of what you have.”
Furthermore, the Minister dissociated his ministry from the proposed N3.9 billion budgeted for the State House Clinic.
He stated that the clinic is not under the supervision of the Ministry of Health, stressing that the presidency is in charge of the project.
He however, added that the original allocation to the clinic may have also been inflated by the same people, who falsified his ministry’s budget.
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