Niger Assembly passes 2020 appropriation bill of N155.4B

Niger State House of Assembly has passed the 2020 appropriation bill of N155, 459, 814, 700.82 with additional N7.2 billion from the N148, 211, 929, 549.82 presented by the state Governor, Abubakar Sani Bello on  December 10, 2019.

The assembly in a sitting on Tuesday, in Minna, received a report of the appropriation committee on 2020 budget led by the member representing Wushishi State Constituency,  Hon. Muhammad Bashir Lokogoma.

Accordingly, the recurrent expenditure,  as passed by the state legislators, was N70,002,224,042.12 from N69,968,379,598.00 as presented while the capital expenditure was N85,457,590,658.00 to replace  N78,243,549,951.

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Lokogoma,  however,  explained that some aspects of the budget were increased to meet up with the current challenges while some things not captured for instance, like  Value Added Tax( VAT) increment by the federal government, agencies with the mega amount to run their affairs were increased during its passage.

The Deputy Speaker and member representing Bida 1, Hon. Bako Kasim Alfa who presided over the sitting and passed the budget clause by clause,  to ensure proper scrutiny.

After the third reading, the budget was passed while the deputy speaker urged the Clerk of the House to make three (3) clean copies to the executive arm, to be assented to,  by the governor.

The committee observed that the submission of the budget was very late and resulted into hasty scrutiny to ensure speedy passage and advised that the executive should lay before lawmakers it’s budget in the first week of November,  every year,  to ensure proper scrutiny.