The House of Representatives has asked the Culture and Tourism Ministry to refund N1.4 billion excess expenditure from the Ministry's 2008 budget just as the lawmakers resolved to look at all the financial engagements of the Abuja carnival for which they approved N350 million.

The House also mandated House Committee on Education to investigate the continuing decay in the educational sector and to report back.

On the refund, Chairman, House committee on Culture and Tourism, Kanayo Ogu-akwa (PDP, Enugu) said at a meeting with the Minister of Culture and Tourism Ade-tokumbo Kayode that the ministry must make the refund.

The amount represents the ministry's fiscal overspending on the 2008 amended budgetary allocation.

The committee noted that there was a particular subhead in which the amendment allows the ministry to spend N16 million but the ministry had already spent N210 million as at September.

On the carnival, Oguakwa said: "It is incredible that such a major national tourism engagement as the Abuja Carnival 2008, an event for which we appropriated funds in excess of N350 million is at hand, and the MDAs saddled with its execution have not deemed it fit to, few days to its kick-off, to brief or even invite the representatives of the Nigerian people."

But the minister defended the ministry saying that the Amendment Budget came after the ministry had almost fully implemented the 2008 Budget as passed by the National Assembly in March.

"This new law does not have retrospective effect," he said. "At the time we implemented the budget dated March, this was the law, and we followed the law."

Meanwhile, in a motion co-sponsored by Dino Melaye (PDP, Kogi), Ini A. Udoka (PDP, Udoka) and 95 others, the House mandated its committee on education to investigate the "continuing causes of decay in our educational system and report back to this House within a specified period."

Leading debate on the motion, Melaye said that performance in the just released results of the last WAEC examinations was an issue of grave concern and urgent steps must be taken to address the situation.

He said that statistics show that of those who sat for the examinations, 87% failed with only 13% passing just as he added that looking at the results critically, 90% failed because that number was not able to make more than three credits.