Oyo State Governor Seyi Makinde will kick off the sixth consultative engagement with stakeholders across the state on Wednesday to produce a people-oriented 2025 Budget.
This aligns with the administration’s tradition of engaging state residents to seek their input in preparing the state’s annual budgets.
The sixth annual consultative stakeholders’ engagement will be held at the University of Ibadan Conference Centre, with subsequent town hall meetings to be held across the state’s seven zones.
Commissioner for budget and economic planning Professor Musbau Babatunde, who disclosed this to journalists, said the consultative meeting was the sixth in the series of town hall meetings organised by the state since the inception of the Governor Makinde administration in 2019.
Babatunde noted that the sixth edition was “Designed to engage the citizenry in preparing and implementing the state’s Annual Budget for the Year 2025.
“This year’s consultative engagement is set to redefine the governance initiative of this administration, as it is designed to align the state with the world’s best practices in the preparation of annual budgets, which support an all-inclusive and open approach to governance, rather than the top to bottom approach.
“The objectives of this approach are to restructure our processes to establish a solid base for our development aspirations.
“The restructuring is ongoing and will extend to all facets of state development to prevent the state from over-dependence on federal allocation by increasing the state IGR and making our budget as realistic and achievable as possible.”
He added that the stakeholders’ consultative meeting will strengthen the bond between the government and the state’s people by seeking their input into the 2025 Budget.
“Apart from ensuring that resource allocations are geared towards impactful projects and programmes implementation that will improve the welfare of the citizenry, this year’s Town Hall meeting will also seek to build people’s confidence in government.
“This engagement will improve the performance of the budget and sustain the developmental objectives of this administration”, Babatunde added.
