The controversy surrounding the 2016 budget\u00a0 continued yesterday as Health Minister,\u00a0\u00a0 Prof. Isaac Adewole, informed the House committee on health that the original budget of his ministry had been largely distorted.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cIn 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<\/p>\n
He claimed that strange figures were smuggled into the budget.<\/p>\n
The minister\u2019s revelation might have reinforced the Senate\u2019s claim that the 2016 budget had been tampered with.<\/p>\n
The minister urged the committee to discard the budget proposal before it and await a new estimate to be re-submitted today. He assured members of the committee that the new proposal would reflect the programmes of the health sector for the year.<\/p>\n
Adewole\u2019s revelation forced Chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Senator Lanre Tejuosho, to convene a closed door session with the minister apparently to discuss the development.<\/p>\n
The minister told the committee that there were some health issues on which conclusions had not been made by the ministry and yet allocations were made on them without the ministry\u2019s knowledge.<\/p>\n
Adewole insisted that 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 and submitted to the budget office.<\/p>\n
He noted that some of the votes earmarked by the ministry for some activities had been re-distributed while some important areas in the sector had been excluded.
\n\u201cWe have to look into the details of the budget and re-submit it to the committee. This was not what we submitted. We\u2019ll submit another one. We don\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
The committee chairman noted that given the submission of the minister, the budget before the committee was not the proposal of the Health Ministry.<\/p>\n
He added that it would be out of place to work on a budget that had already been disowned by the minister.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The controversy surrounding the 2016 budget\u00a0 continued yesterday as Health Minister,\u00a0\u00a0 Prof. Isaac Adewole, informed the House committee on health that the original budget of his ministry had been largely…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46337,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exclusive"],"yoast_head":"\n