‘We are fighting corruption at Bauchi scholarship board’
Tell us the effort the board is making in payment of student allowances?You know, before you spend in any government organization you need to prepare a budget. So we budgeted certain amount of money in our 2013 financial year to help us execute the payment of student allowances. What we did was to actually know […]
Tell us the effort the board is making in payment of student allowances?
You know, before you spend in any government organization you need to prepare a budget. So we budgeted certain amount of money in our 2013 financial year to help us execute the payment of student allowances.
What we did was to actually know the exact number of students that were going to be paid and with that we were able to arrive at a total of N425 million. This is exactly what we budgeted for in our 2013 financial year in order to pay the scholarship of Bauchi State students who are studying locally and those who are studying in other countries – that is foreign students.
After that, when we received the approval for the amount in the budget from the Bauchi State House of Assembly, we wrote a memo to the governor who graciously approved it. So immediately after that we forwarded the approval to the Ministry of Finance and luckily, N125 million out of the total amount was approved. When we received the amount we commenced arrangement for the payments, and what we normally do is to categorize the institutions. We select some few institutions that will accommodate the total amount of the money given to use. Presently, we have constituted a committee of our staff comprising eight teams, that were distributed according to the number of institutions, to go and pay the allowances and they have started payment. Everything is going smoothly, there is no problem.
We are in 2013 and you mentioned that the money approved in this year’s budget is to take care of the 2011/2012 academic year. Why is this so?
You know, payment of student allowances depend on the releases that we receive from the government. Whatever you receive is what you will use to operate. So since we are in 2013 financial year we have to use that money to pay backlog, before we move forward; this is exactly what we are doing.
There are allegations that because of delay in payment of student allowances, many indigenes, including foreign students were unable to pay their tuition fees and have deferred their studies for a year?
No, we have not received any complaint because the government has been paying as at when due, particularly the foreign students. We don’t have any problem. Our students know the situation in the country regarding financial matters; it is not peculiar to Bauchi that is why they don’t report any problem to us. They know we have been left behind with one year. They have not been paid for the last year but all the same they are very much aware of the situation and they usually understand the issue and we have been in touch with their leaders.
There are also allegations that during payment some of the students are underpaid; some others have their names omitted, while others were taxed to pay certain amount by board officials. How do you react to this?
Yes, we do receive such complaints from the students during all our payments and you know we are human, we are bound to make mistakes. And it is not only the scholarship staff that are working on this particular issue and in order to check any problem that may occur in the exercise, we are working with a consultant.
When we submit a list to him, he has his own system where he has already captured all the data of our students to guide him on whether such students will be given cheques for payments or whatever and also it shows him when the students would complete their studies or whether they have committed some malpractices. Malpractices in the sense that some of them fill double forms, so in this situation the board has already taken a decision that whoever fills two or more forms will be disqualified. So in most cases these are the issues that mostly arise. When the consultant discovered that certain students have committed such offences they delete their names. Such students come and complain to us and we inform them that they have committed an offence that was why their names did not appear on our list.
We have given him go ahead to discipline these students by expunging their names from the list and not printing their cheques. But there are times we receive genuine cases of names being omitted but it is still the fault of the students who were not captured during verification.
Why are you introducing e-payment for the 2013 scholarship allowances?
The reason we decided to go for e-payment is, you know, the world is changing. We are now in an era that everything you are to do, has to do with computer, it makes things easier and transparent. So government felt it would make things easier for the board to execute this particular exercise and even save a lot, because there are many loopholes that we have noticed in the process of the payment. There are so many misdeeds committed by students, staff and even outsiders against the board that is why government felt that there is need for us to go for e-payment to reduce all these leakages and dubious acts.
Secondly, government felt that through e-payment the board will be able to discharge its responsibility such that the students will not abuse the system because we will have a control system whereby nobody will go and claim somebody’s cheque, nobody will go and clone cheque and make N1,000 to be N100,000. We will be able to do away with all these malpractices. This system will be effective from 2013/2014.
Recently, the scholarship board set up a committee to investigate the activities of some of its staff over missing money, how far have you gone with the exercise?
Yes, the case is still under investigation. When the matter came up, about five staff were affected and they are being investigated by the EFCC. What exactly happened was that during our 2010/2011 payment exercise, we discovered that certain amount of money has disappeared from our account. So we decided to investigate it. In the process, we discovered that five staff of our board were involved, so when we set up an internal committee that investigated the matter during which some bank staff were found to be involved and we handed them over to the EFCC for further investigation.
Is it true that the state government plans on retaining students that have benefitted from the scholarship at the end of their studies?
Yes, government is now trying to make it like a bond to all of them so that when they complete their studies and come back they will work for the state for a certain period of time, before they will be allowed to switch over to any other place of their interest. Government is working on this, particularly medical students, and those studying other related course like engineering, for the development of the state.