Adamawa 2016 Budget estimates unsustainable – Dan Richards

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By Tina Phineas, Yola.
Governor Muhammadu Umaru Jibrilla of Adamawa state has been criticized for presenting an unrealizable 2016 budget proposal of N120 billion to the State House of Assembly recently.
Mr. Daniel Richards, an Adamawa born international businessman and philanthropist who made the criticism in an interview with journalists at Yola international Airport, maintained that the budget is unnecessarily padded, for a state that has a very slim IGR profile.
“If anybody tells you that N127 billion will come out of Adamawa you know that is a lie and it cannot work,” he warned.
Richards disclosed that like his predecessors, Governor Jibrilla seems unprepared for the onerous task of governing the state as he noted with concern that the government lack clear and articulated developmental agenda and a focus that will salvage the state from its monumental stagnation.
“Like anybody before him, he came without a programme, he found out that the roads are bad and he is doing the roads.
“I am happy for that, let him continue doing the roads, by the time he finished the roads we would find out whether there would be any hospital,” he said.
He expressed fears that the government in the state can not sustain the payment of salaries to its teeming workforce with its concomitant consequences especially in consideration of the fact that the state is largely a civil service state.
“The past administrations did not do anything, so whatever he does now people would think he has done well. But it is too early in the life of the administration for us to start judging it,” he said.
“I don’t know whether this administration has priorities because for me as Adamawa indigene, it is better to provide water for me than for me to drive on good roads,” Richards added.
When contacted on the development, Special Assistant on Media to the Governor, Mr.Martins Dickson promised to make Govenment responses available but did not as of the time of filling this report.
It could be recaledl that Governor Jibrilla Bindow in December 2015 presented a budget proposal to the tune of over N120 Billion before the House of Assembly adjudged to be the highest budget proposal in the history of the state.

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