Members of the House of Representatives Committees on Public Accounts and Ministry of Science and Technology, on the 23rd of April 2012 queried the Science and Technology ministry over an alleged N661million fraud bordering on excessive spending and non-adherence to due process. It was gathered that the House Committee on Science and Technology queried the use of N557 million budgeted for the hosting of the International Junior Science Olympiad between 2009 and 2010. Its counterpart in the Public Accounts Committee, PAC, of the House has also queried the ministry over the use of N104 million for the branding and repositioning the agency and its affiliates. The query from the Office of the Auditor General of the Federation claimed that the ministry preferred depositing funds with its affiliate rather than the parent ministry. It revealed that the ministry in 2011 raised 31 vouchers for N32 million it used to purchase stationery that were not properly retired and failed to follow due process. It was also alleged that the queries against the ministry have been subsisting for the past seven years. The Committee Chairman, Rep Solomon Adeola, said the ministry had failed to appear before the committee to defend the budgetary infractions.
Most Nigerians lack some basic amenities such as portable water, is the money had been used to construct boreholes at the rate of N300,000, about 2, 200 boreholes would have been constructed with 2,200 communities benefiting from such project.
If the money had been geared towards the training of Nigerian youths in the area of science and technology at the rate of N100,000 per head, a number of 6610 youths would not only have been trained and also empowered to be entrepreneurs.
