Kaduna Govt To Spend N55bn On LGAs In  2018 Budget

0
322

By; JULIANA KATUNG, Kaduna
Kaduna State Government is to spend over N55.991,240,959.84  in the 23 local government areas  in the 2018 financial year.
The sum of  N34.8 billion  will be spent as recurrent which takes 62.24% of the budget while the sum of  21.1 billion  dominates the capital expenditure which covers 37.7% of the total budget.
The 23 local government areas appeared before the state assembly committee on appropriation to defend their budgets for the year.
Chairman House Committee on Appropriation, Alhaji Ahmed Mohammed while speaking with newsmen shortly after the budget defence by the local government areas commended the conduct of the defence exercise.
“The exercise was conducted smoothly and the total estimates of N55,991,240,959.84 is being scrutinized by the members.  I believe each and every item put in the budget  will benefit the people of the local government areas and the entire state,” he said.
He assured the electorate that the lawmakers in the state  are doing every thing possible to deliver dividends of democracy to the people and that all the proposed projects in the budget are geared towards ensuring that.
Also speaking, the Chairman, Association  of Local Government of Nigeria (ALGON), Alhaji Yahaya Sale who spoke with journalist shortly after defending the budget of  Giwa Local council, said  Kaduna state government proposed zero based budget which is a rolling budget year,
“We have no problem because we have sat down  with most members at individual local government level, deliberated with them to locate grey areas and make corrections which is why the budget defence went on smoothly and all process were harmonized,”  he said
He Added that efforts  have been  put on by the state in its bid to deliver dividends of democracy, one of which is the introduction of a community budget, “this is kind of budget which started in England and it aids towards looking inwards to locate the problems of the community and then check to see if the government can afford to tackle the problem located or not.
“If the government cannot afford to meet up with these new needs then, private organizations are called upon to come and make an investment with the hope of making the community enjoy what the government is unable to provide for them at a very mild profit that the community will not suffer and at an available and efficient condition,” he explained explained.
He urged  organizations like NURTW, NUT, PTD and other organizations, to come and invest but instead of investing in building of hotels, they can invest in building of schools,  hospitals, roads construction and giving the services  to the people of the communities at a cheaper rate  instead of going to general hospitals in the cities, stressing that this will decongest the hospitals in the cities.
Meanwhile,  the 23 Local government areas sole administrators defended their  budgets with Lere having  the highest budget size of over three billion Naira ( 3,004,384,406.80) and Kudan got the lowest budget size of over one billion (1,587,289,746.66).

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here