Judex Okoro, Calabar
Governor Ben Ayade of Cross River State has signed the 2020 appropriation bill into law.
Ayade, who signed the document at the Executive Chambers of Governor’s Office in Calabbar on Tuesday, promised to complete the signature projects of the administration including Super Highway and Bakassi Deep Sea Port.
The N1.1 trillion Appropriation Bill is christened “Budget of Olimpotic Merristamasis.” In 2019, the state budgeted the sum of N1.04trillion
The sum of N911 billion, representing 82% of the estimates, will be for capital estimates while N188 billion, 18%, will be spent on recurrent expenditure.
A breakdown shows that the health sector will gulp N44 billion, N38 billion for education, N22 billion for agriculture while N85 billion will go to the New Cities Project
Commending the House of Assembly for prompt passage of the bill, Ayade said: “Cross River is the first state in the history of Nigeria to present a budget of over a trillion naira. The first time in the history of Nigeria that a state, a sub national, has presented a budget in the neigbhourhood of over a trillion naira.
“There are two types of budgeting. Either you do deficient budgeting or you do envelope budgeting. In envelope budgeting, if you look at your medium-term expenditure framework, you budget according to your expectation which is an agenda informed by how much you intend to achieve.
“Nobody has asked how Cross River which gets the lowest allocation in the country and services debt in the neighourhood of N1.8 billion manages to pay teachers, civil servants, pensioners.”
Continuing, he said: “In the 2020 appropriation bill I have just signed into law, we have developed factories that have matured to a point where you need only operating capital to have them start commercial production. It will be the end of suffering in Cross River.
“Cross River State has 33 industries in four years and you can point at them. So, I want to assure all of you that this budget of N1.1 trillion is something we can achieve, something we can accomplish.”
He explained that the state would be able to achieve its objectives “because the deficiency is compromised with intellectual money.”
While presenting the budget to the governor for signing earlier, the speaker of the State House of Assembly, Jones Eteng Williams, said the House would vigorously carry out oversight functions on the ministries.
He said: “The appropriation bill is like a Bible for us because it’s the document we work with. We don’t have any other document.”