"Education ministry’s 2014 budget is consolidating" - Nyesom Wike

The Supervising Minister of Education, Ezenwo Nyesom Wike has said that the thrust of the 2014 Budget of the Ministry of Education is to consolidate on the modest achievements made over the last few years on access to education and quality assurance.

The Minister disclosed this during a meeting on the Ministry’s 2014 Budget defence before the House of Representatives Committee on Education recently. He recalled the problems facing the education sector and the significant steps taken by this administration to address them, noting that the landscape of the basic, secondary and tertiary institutions are dotted with infrastructural development. He stressed that the thrust of the 2014 budget of the ministry is to consolidate and improve on these achievements.

Ezenwo Wike, while speaking on the 2014 proposal revealed that a total sum of N493, 458,130,268 was proposed for the sector, whereas the total capital appropriated is N 49,536,035,231. He observed a significant drop of about 30.46% in the 2014 capital proposal compared to that of 2013. Adding, the varied interventions to the sector aside from the annual budget would help in addressing the challenges.

The Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Education, Suleiman Aminu in his opening remarks said that the budget defence happened when the sector was experiencing critical challenges, noting that past efforts have not yielded projected results.

He identified poor release of appropriations as bane on implementation efforts and called on the executive to take positive steps towards addressing it as the Committee is ready to support the sector to move forward.