The Lagos State House of Assembly and Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu have been called out over the 2022 budget recently passed by the assembly by a Lagosian and member of the Prominent Indigenes of Lagos State, Dr Ade Dosunmu, who described the approval and passing of the budget as the “height of financial recklessness.”
Dosunmu said as a responsible citizen and patriotic stakeholder in the state, he is compelled to bring to the attention of Lagosians the budgetary disparity, hugely flawed process and impending implication of the recently passed 2022 financial budget highlighting of the state.
According to him, it is exceedingly shocking that Lagos State House of Assembly passed a totally different budget which he described as “padded to the tune of ₦1,758,196,448,44 trillion, an addition of almost N400 billion over the originally proposed figure of ₦1.38trillion.
“On November 24, 2021, the Executive Governor of Lagos State, Mr Babajide Sanwo-Olu presented a proposal of ₦1.38 Trillion tagged as ‘Budget of Consolidation’ to the State House of Assembly as the 2022 Lagos State financial Budget.
“This was welcomed by discerning Lagosians with cautious optimism. It is logically expected that the governance of a state would have employed the whole gamut of well experienced civil service workforce across various agencies and ministries with the assistance of experts within the Budget and Economic Planning ministry to collate and review this budget prior to its presentation to the State House of Assembly for approval with non or minimal modification required,” he said.
The disparity in the budget, he said raises certain questions; “where, why and how did the Lagos State House of Assembly conjure an addition in excess of ₦350billion over the meticulously prepared and ratified document put together by the Lagos State bureaucracy? What did the Governor omit in his original budget proposal to warrant such increment from the hallowed chambers of the State House of Assembly?
“Why did Governor Sanwo-Olu not ask any question as President Muhammdu Buhari did in querying the N37billion padding of the National Budget by the National Assembly? What then can we say of almost N400billion padding of a State budget?” he queried.
Dosunmu said these questions need clarification as “the government needs to be transparent in the way our collective patrimony is being spent. The helpless people of Lagos State are left to wonder how the state genuinely and sincerely plans to fund this outrageous budget without recourse to potentially enslaving borrowings,” he said.
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