Group Faults Diri’s 2024 Budget

Bayelsa Development Initiative (BDI) has described Governor Douye Diri’s 2024 budget as a rehash of similar past documents without any vision and direction to champion the development of the state.

BDI said after studying the document, there was nothing to cheer as it remained a repetition of old budgets with high increase in recurrent expenditure to satisfy the huge appetite of the ruling class at the detriment of the state and the people’s development and empowerment.

Insisting that the 2024 budget was unambitious, drab and watery, BDI in a statement signed at the weekend by its secretary, Michael Sam-Rodamini, said there was nothing the budget whose recurrent expenditure of N212.7 billion was higher than the capital expenditure of N176.6bn could do to break the shackles of poverty, hunger and underdevelopment of the state.

Sam-Rodamini said, “The 2024 Budget is simply a rehash of similar past documents with the same sub-heads. The only difference is that old figures were changed and adjusted to higher ones. It is not a product of any deep thinking and serious research to reflect the new realities and challenges of the people,” BDI said.

He said Bayelsa was in dire need of quality capital projects such as roads, bridges, water among others and required a budget that would ambitiously cut the astronomically high cost of running government contained in Diri’s 2024 budget.

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Sam-Rodamini said while a whooping N39.4bn was budgeted for the governor’s office and N7bn for Government House, the entire Ministry of Water Resources got only N1.7bn.

“The implication is that while the governor lives in profligacy, buying the best of bottled water to quench his thirst, the masses of Bayelsa will still groan under the affliction of water borne diseases as they keep depending on contaminated water bodies to quench their thirst.

“The implication is that the masses of Bayelsa will continue to buy water from vendors popularly called ‘merua’. With such a paltry sum of money budgeted for the ministry of water resources, it means that the government has no plan to embark on the needed water reticulation project to connect Bayelsa homes to pipe borne water. This government is not ready to do anything that will benefit the people,” he said.