Reps frown at UBEC’s pre-budgetary spending
The House of Representatives Committee on Basic Education has frowned at the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) for embarking on pre-budgetary expenditure, declaring that the commission violated the Fiscal Responsibility Act for accessing and spending funds before the passage of the 2016 Appropriation Act.
The committee chaired by Rep. Zakari Mohammed (APC/ Kwara) issued the query during an interactive meeting with the management of the Commission to appraise the 2016 budget performance.
The query arose following a disclosure by the UBEC Director of Finance, Mohammed Sambo while responding to a question by a member of the committee, when he responded that the Commission has received almost 92 per cent of its 2016 budget allocation with 100 per cent utilisation.
Mr. Sambo informed the committee members that the Commission started accessing funds for recurrent and other expenditures since March, 2016 from a budget that became operational in May.
He said: “We get our funding based on what was appropriated. If the appropriation is N77billion, we get N6billion every month and in the first quarter, we would have gotten N18billion”.
Probed further, he said the commission started accessing funds as early as March, 2016 even before the budget was passed into law.
Sensing danger, the UBEC Executive Secretary, Mr. Habib Bobboi tried to extricate himself of any complicity, explaining that he came to UBEC on the August 4, 2016 and met a total of N300million in-balance according to the handover notes he received.
“There are a lot of contracts that were given under the matching grant with outstanding liabilities of over N800million”, he said.
Asked if the Treasury Single Account (TSA) policy did not apply to the Commission with regard to the return of unused funds going back to the TSA since it started accessing funds in March, the UBEC chief said mopping up of funds did not necessarily hinder the Commission in terms of ongoing projects as funds accessed were expected to be fully utilised without being returned to the federal coffers.
He added that the inability of some states to utilise grants from the Commission led to the incidence of un-accessed funds still lying untouched with UBEC.
Speaking further on the issue of grants in-balance, the Executive Secretary said accumulation of un-accessed funds started from 2005 and they have always been accumulating, adding that “some states are up and others are behind without coming to access the funds because they lack the willingness to provide the counterpart funding, and that why the funds accumulated.
“There’s zero performance by states on Basic Education due to lack of accessibility to funds. Abia State has not accessed it’s matching grant for four years”, he added.
He called for reduction of the matching grant to enable states meet up with themselves in terms of access due to the burden of counterpart contributions.
“There are states in Nigeria that don’t pay serious attention to the issue of education beginning with basic education. The last time we met with States Universal Basic Education Commissions (SUBECs) in Jos, I raised the issue of states needing to come forward to access funds lying fallow in UBEC which they need to finance basic education.
“And I specifically made mention of Abia which has at least N4billion with UBEC but has not come to access it. If not for the matching grant, at least, it can be used to enhance enrolment of the boy child in schools which is one basic area of concern in the south east.
“So while some states are doing very well in terms of availability of access to basic education, others don’t care at all”, he added.
Rep. Kehinde Agboola (PDP/ Ekiti) asked why other states are not being captured in the coverage area of UBEC, noting that Ekiti was not included.
Responding, the UBEC Director of Finance, Mohammed Sambo said: “Normally the practice is to tell the states to send in their action plan upon which they can access the matching grant.
“On the issue of Ekiti, they still have that of 2014 pending un-accessed let alone 2016. Reason being that previous grants accessed was not up to 50% utilisation, which is why Ekiti was not included in the 2016 plan”.
He also revealed that the state had a peculiar problem of liability to financial institution which was triggered following a change of leadership in the State.
“In the case of Ekiti State, when the counterpart fund was paid and UBEC threw in its matching grant, the bank withdrew the counterpart fund the moment the former governor (Kayode Fayemi) lost election, and UBEC had no choice but to withdraw it’s matching grants”, he disclosed.
The Rep. Zakari Mohammed-led Committee demanded for a detailed analysis of expenditure and ongoing capital projects been executed by the commission.
