From Rose Ejembi, Makurdi
The House of Representatives Committee on Public Acounts has held a 3-day fact finding session on expenditure by tertiary institutions as well as other government agencies in the North Central region of the country.
The Chairman of the Committee, Hassan Usman, spoke to reporters after the public hearing which was held at the Banquet hall of Benue Hotels in Makurdi, the Benue State capital on Tuesday.
Usman possaidited that the Committee is not out to witch-hunt any institution but has come to see how judiciously they have used resources that were given to them by the Tertiary Education Fund (TETFUND).
‘We have interacted with TETFUND and they said that the resources given to them in the right, they pass unto the tertiary institutions. And the committee said Okay, we need to visit the various institutions to ascertain value for the money.
‘We have no business visiting the State Universal Basic Education Boards ?SUBEB) because they are supposed to be handled by the State Assemblies but why we included them is, there is money that is usually released to them in terms of zonal interventions from the Universal Basic Education Board, (UBEC) and that is the area that concerns us.
‘We are therefore here to ascertain whether those monies are judiciously applied or utilized. Once we are satisfied, we will make recommendations back to TETFUND and UBEC so that more resources can be allocated to institutions in the North Central,’ Usman said.
It should be noted that during the hearing, the National Investment Programme which houses the N-Power and the conditional cash Transfer, Home Grown School Feeding, National Social Safety Net, Government Enterprises and Empowerment Programme, and the Universal Basic Education Board, UBEC intervention projects through the State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) appeared before the committee and presented financial documents.
Others who appeared before the Committee are the Sustainable Development Goal, Transmission Company of Nigeria,TCN and Tertiary Education Fund, TETFUND, Federal University of Agriculture, Makurdi, Benue State University, Benue State Polytechnic, and Colleges of Education Katsina-Ala and Oju.