KOGI State government has said it had put machinery in place to ensure proper and adequate implementation of the 2017 appropriation when passed into law.
The Director General, Bureau of information and Grassroots Mobilisation, Abdulkareem Abdulmalik, said this at the “budget 2017 roundtable conference”, organised by the federated chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Kogi State chapter.
This came just a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), the Centre for Human Rights and Conflicts Resolution, scrunitised the budget, saying the document lacked “purposeful direction”.
The executive director of the centre, Idris Miliki, noted that the bill as presented before the state house of assembly was incapable of meeting the yearning and aspifation of the people and also cater for the much-needed development in the state.
The state governor, Alhaji Yahaya Bello, had on December 22, 2016 presented a budget of N174 billion before the assembly members for consideration and approval.
However, Abdumalik said the budget was put together in line with the resolve of the governor, to shift from the past and develop the state.
According to Bello, the government would implement the budget to the letter, saying funding of it would not solely depending on allocation from the federation accounts.
He explained that government had already blocked some leakages through which funds meant for development are siphoned, adding that the internally generated revenue of the state had moved from N300 million monthly to N1 billion.
He added that the governor in his bid to ensure that all the people of the state benefit from government had made the capital expenditures to be higher than current in the budget.
But Miliki in his presentation at the event, said the budget was too ambitious with the state government unable to spell out how it would finance it, taking into consideration the paltry internally generated revenue available and the drastic drop in revenue from the federation account.
Apart from this, he said the over N14 billion allocated to the Government House, office of the deputy governor, office of the Secretary to the State Government (SSG), Head of Service and the minjstry of finance was uncalled for.
He said,”On the 2017 budget, while the total capital expenditure is commendable, if diligently implemented, we are however worried about the sources of financing this huge and unrealistic budget taking cognisance of the level of internally generated revenue in the state.
We are also worried and wonder why the new government has not deemed it fit to create new revenue generating institutions and establishment, particularly in the mining sector, where Kogi State has a comparative advantage with 29 mineral deposited in commercial quantities, above any other state in the country.
“It is disturbing that the government has estimated N24, 983,269,513, totalling 14 percent of the entire 2017 budget, to be squandered by the Government House, which is not a revenue generating institution. Also, the deputy governor’s would spend N884, 675,887; Head of Service Office will gulp N2, 563,857,059, Auditor general office N392, 018,549.
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