Following the outcry that greeted the allocation of N5 billion for the renovation of a daycare in the 2024 budget of Ondo State, the state government has described the development as an error.
The Ondo State Commissioner for Budget and Economic Planning, Emmanuel Igbasan, who blamed the printer of the document for the error, stated that it was a mix-up.
Earlier, the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, had accused the state governor, Lucky Aiyedatiwa, of purportedly using that as an avenue to mop up funds ahead of the forthcoming governorship election.
Igbasan, in a statement, said: “The five billion naira provision was actually meant to reflect the expected drawdown from the Nigerian for Women Project (World Bank supported) which had earlier been captured under the capital receipts of the document.
“The N18 million reported on the Nigerian for Women Project is meant for the renovation of a daycare project. This is a regrettable printer’s interpolation error that occurred during the process of preparing the document for publication.
“At the operational level, this error will not materialise and is almost impossible to detect. The Ministry takes full responsibility for this error and we have immediately set in motion the machinery to have the error corrected.”