State Passes 2017 Appropriation Bill

The Niger State House of Assembly on Thursday passed the 2017 appropriation bill of N116.196billion into law.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the figure showed an N8.122bn increase from the N108.074billion presented by the state governor.

The passage followed the presentation of the report of the Committee on Appropriation and Planning on the 2017 budget.

Tagged the “Budget of Consolidation,’’ the law set aside N48.217billion for recurrent expenditure, as against N48.047billion and N67.978billion for capital expenditure and N60.026billion budgeted by the executive.

The Chairman of the Committee, Mr Muhammad Lokogoma, said the adjustments were made in areas critical to the policy direction of the present administration, with the belief of sourcing for more revenue to finance them.

“In its desire to consider increases in some critical areas, the committee looked into various sources of revenue and discovered that improvement could be made from statutory allocation and internally generated revenue.” he said.

Lokogoma said the committee expressed dismay over the lack of synergy between the Planning Commission and the Ministry of Finance in information sharing for proper planning.

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“The Committee observed with dismay the lack of synergy between the Planning Commission and the Ministry of Finance in information sharing.

“The committee, therefore, recommends that the two ministries be reorganised so as to have a complementary role in budget planning,” he said.

In his remarks, the Speaker of the House, Alhaji Ahmed Marafa, thanked the committee members for working tirelessly towards the passage of the law.

Marafa directed the clerk to forward clean copies of the budget to the governor for his assent.

In a related development, the House passed a resolution granting the governor approval to access a Federal Government special fertilizer intervention credit facility of N1.5billion.

The House passed the resolution following a letter from the governor, which was read by the speaker.