The Bauchi State Government on Friday said it could not sponsor over 8,000 candidates from the state for the Senior Secondary School WAEC examinations
The Bauchi State Government on Friday said it could not sponsor over 8,000 candidates from the state for the Senior Secondary School WAEC examinations, because of lack of funds, PremiumTimes is reporting.
This is despite the fact that the state government recently spent N3.6 billion on new cars for its officials which is violation of federal and state procurement laws.
The government said it will sponsor only about 13,000 candidates out of 21,000 available students, the chief of staff to the governor, Ladan Salihu, said in a press statement.
Salihu said the state has pleaded with WAEC to allow parents pay for their wards who did not make it on the government sponsored list.
The state governor, Bala Mohammed, had awarded a contract to a company in which he has a stake in for the supply of 105 ‘official vehicles’ for the use of the governor and other government officials.
Contract of this nature are expected to follow standard bidding processes through open competitive bidding, according to the Bauchi State Public Procurement, Budget Monitoring and Price Intelligence Agency Law. Also, the Code of Conduct law, in section 5 and 6, bars public officers from putting themselves in position of conflict of interest and disallows them from partaking in any business other than farming.
But the governor flouted this and went ahead to award to contract. Another issue with the award of the N3.6 billion contract is the inflation of the amount involved and the number of vehicles that outsized the number of officials whom the vehicles were meant for. While the 2019 Bauchi State budget provide for N1 billion for motor vehicles purchases to be handed by the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, Mr Muhammad’s led administration increased the money by N2.6 billion.
