Oluseye Ojo, Ibadan
Oyo State Governor, Seyi Makinde, has signed into law the 2019 Revised Budget of N182.4 billion, which is a review of the Appropriation Act of N285 billion signed by the immediate past governor, Abiola Ajimobi, in the first quarter of the year.
The ceremony took place at the Executive Council Chambers of the Governor’s Office, Agodi, Ibadan and was attended by the Deputy Governor, Rauf Olaniyan; Speaker Adebo Ogundoyin, and principal officers of the parliament and executive arm.
The actual amount signed by Makinde as passed by the lawmakers is N182,389,434,405,52, out of which N98,769,034,202,03 has been allocated for recurrent expenditure and N83,620,400,203,49 for capital expenditure for the year ending December 31, 2019.
With the new budget, N103 billion was cut off from the N285 billion, which former governor Ajimobi had tagged: ‘Budget of Sustainability’.
In the appropriation act, he allocated N163.47 billion to capital expenditure and N121.53 billion to recurrent expenditure.
Governor Makinde commended the legislators for cutting short their recess to work on the budget and pass it in record time.
He said if his administration continued with the old budget as passed by the Eighth Assembly, the performance that could be achieved on the budget would be between 25 and 38 per cent.
The old budget, he said, was not consistent with the direction the state should go, adding that the budget performance of the previous years did not go beyond 40 percent in implementation.
“So, we decided that our target for the year would be at least 70 percent budget performance. Of course, we are aware that there may be the issue of ego here. We may want to feel belonged. We want to get into the, maybe, $1 billion budget club. But I want to give you the assurance, the day we attain that status as a $1 billion budget state, under this administration, it won’t be a photo trick. When we tell the people of Oyo State we have attained that status, then truly we have attained the status.
“When we came in, we met a budget of N285 billion for the year. We went into the revenue profile. We are getting roughly N5 billion monthly from the federal allocation and the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) is about N2 billion, making N7 billion roughly every month. If I multiply that by 12, that is N84 billion. Immediately, we said there is a hole of N200 billion in the budget. So, we asked questions,” he said.