By ARMSTRONG ALLAHMAGANI, Bauchi –
A supplimentatry appropriation bill of N46 billion passed by the State House of Assembly has been signed into law by the Bauchi state Governor, Senator Bala Mohammed.
Speaking while presenting the appropriation bill to the governor for his ascent, the Speaker of the Bauchi State House of Assembly, Abubakar Suleiman, said that the supplementary bill was submitted by the governor to the Assembly last Friday.
According to him, the House expedited action on it to ensure that it is passed without delay to allow the governor provides dividends of democracy to the citizenry.
He stated: “You presented this bill to us last week Friday and because of our zeal just like the governor, we felt we should not waste much time in going through this document and then finally passing it into law.
“The entire members of the State Assembly are going on the same direction with the Governor and we are always ready to partner with you to play our own constitutional duty to ensure that the people of Bauchi state enjoy dividends of democracy.
“This supplementary appropriation bill 2020 which is a law to authorize the issue for the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the state, a total sum of N42,824,390,705 only.
“From this N6 billion is for additional Recurrent Expenditure while the balance of N36,824,390,705 only is for the additional Capital expenditure for the year ending December, 2020.
The Speaker said that even though the year was ending, the governor decided to send the appropriation bill for legislation by the House saying that “this shows that the governor is always eager to work for the people of Bauchi state.”
In his speech while signing the bill into law at the Government House, Bauchi, the governor said the state was making history to have signed the after the coronavirus.
He said: “We’re today again making history in collaboration with the House of Assembly and the Government of Bauchi and the state is moving forward that we are presenting this as the only state in the federation to do supplementation after COVID and this is an attestation that Bauchi is working.
“We cannot allow ourselves to be coward or vowed by the COVID-19, our timelines, milestones must b achieved and we are working as a government to make sure that all the deliverables are being delivered within the timeline.
He said that his administration is giving special attention to the Internal Generated Revenue and will use it to borrow from the banks and not from the federal government pointing out that the state’s IGR has been raised by 300 percent since he assumed office as governor.
“We are not using our federation account to borrow this time around because we have exceeded the threshold for borrowing using our money from the federal government.
“We are now looking inwards making sure we save cost, all the wastages that we used to do in terms of ghost workers, in terms of lack of collection of IGR at the local government and at the state level have been put behind and we are now on the path of using our IGR to borrow money and execute projects and programmes that will put us on the paths of prosperity,” he said.
The governor said that from the capital expenditure, his administration will embark on massive road constructions within the state capital and across the local government areas including the dualization of major roads in the city center.
According to him, the recurrent expenditure will be used to provide vehicles and other logistics for security agencies in the state.
Mohammed said: “We are also looking at the other overhead of N6 billion, we have to provide for our security, our Army, our Police, the Civil Defense, they don’t have vehicles and we have to provide them with the means to make us save and secure.
“From the statewide vote, we are going to leverage and buy vehicles for them.
“People are wondering where we getting money, we are getting money together, the government and the Assembly, because we and the Assembly are denying our ourselves all the goodies that we are supposed to enjoy to make sure we plow back to capital projects so that we can improve and catch up.
“Some other sub-nationals have gone 50 years ahead of us and I intend to carry on that rejuvenate journey where we will catch up and maybe surpass them because we have the resources to do that.”
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