In spite of the autonomy recently granted local government councils by a Supreme Court judgement, the Niger State House of Assembly has considered and adopted the report of its Standing Committee on Local Governments and passed a budget of N151.7 billion for councils in the state.
The standing committee chaired by Hon. Bello Bako from Rijau Constituency since last week invited all the 25 local government councils to defend their budgets for collective legislation.
It was learnt that the committee engaged representatives of the Ministry of Local Government and Planning Commission to advise on matters of procedure and extant financial rules and regulations.
Consequently, at plenary yesterday, the committee reported that the recurrent expenditure of the councils as proposed was made up of N96.2bn and capital expenditure was made up of N55.4bn, bringing the total budget size of the 25 local government councils to N151.7bn.
The committee further recommended the need to establish sound and sustainable mechanisms to improve the revenue base of local government councils by vigorously pursuing revenue collection and blocking leakages.
The committee also advised that mechanisms be put in place to ensure prompt lodging of revenues into local government revenue accounts and improve capital allocations to impact lives of the masses.
The House unanimously adopted the budget bill and the speaker, Rt. Hon. Barr. Abdulmalik Mohammed Sarkin-Daji and directed the Clerk of the House to transmit a clean copy to the executive for assent.
Meanwhile, the leader of civil society organisations in the state, Comrade Abdullahi Jabi, told LEADERSHIP that since autonomy had been granted to the councils, legislation on the budget should be done by councillors of the various local governments.
He said except there are special arrangements to withhold the implementation of the Supreme Court judgement, “it is an aberration for the House of Assembly to legislate on local government budget.”
