Oyo Assembly urges Makinde to urgently release grants to schools 

The Oyo State House of Assembly has urged Governor Seyi Makinde to urgently release grants to public secondary schools to guarantee the smooth running of the schools.

This call was contained in the report of the House Committee on Public Accounts, Finance and Appropriation on the state’s 2022 Appropriation bill, presented and adopted at plenary on Tuesday, where N294,704,585,356.94 was passed as the 2022 budget.

This call comes against the backdrop of the yearning of school authorities for the release of more grants since N526 million was approved as running costs for public schools for the first term of the 2019/2020 academic session.

Responding to the call for more grants, it will be recalled that Governor Seyi Makinde decried that he got incomplete information about how the N526 million grant was distributed and wanted accountability before releasing more grants.

However, in the report presented by the chairman of the House Committee on Appropriation, Akeem Mustapha, and adopted at Tuesday’s plenary, the Assembly said there is the need for the state government, through the Teaching Service Commission (TESCOM), to expedite action towards releasing the grants.

The Assembly, however, noted the need for adequate monitoring and regular supervision to ensure that the grants are judiciously expended.

Also, the committee report called on the state government to wholistically reconsider the issue of engaging consultants in managing the affairs of tertiary institutions in the state.

The Assembly noted that that the situation had deprived governing boards and management of the institutions of ability to take decisions and that they could not spend a penny without the approval of consultants, even in the case of emergencies.

The report also saw the Assembly decry that several Ministries, Department and Agencies (MDAs) performed below average in the 2021 budget due to their inability to access funds to execute capital projects and for smooth running of their offices.

The 2022 budget passed at the plenary comprises N154,678,136,971 as Capital expenditure and N140,526,448,385.94 as Recurrent expenditure.

The approved budget is an increase of N188,140,249.94 to the budget proposal of N294,516,445,107 presented by Governor Seyi Makinde at plenary on September 29.

A look at the budget shows N26,215,740,129 allocated to the Governor’s office; N1,346,375,002 for Amotekun; N6,044,716,456.29 for the Oyo House of Assembly and N7,770,486,614 for the Oyo Agribusiness Development Agency.

Other allocations are N15,053,368,731 for the Oyo State Pension Board; N6,154,000,000 for the Ladoke Akintola University of Technology; N5,980,000,000 for the Judiciary and N14,100,000,000 allotted to the Ibadan Urban Flood Management Agency.

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