By Mohammed Suleiman, Dutse.
A Non Governmental Organization, Exceptional Leadership and Integrity Promotion Initiative has decried low budget performance for the year 2023 in most critical sectors of health and education in Jigawa State.
The Executive Director of ELIP initiative, Comrade Isa Mustapha disclosed this while presenting the analysis of the third-quarter 2023 budget performance for health and education sectors held in Dutse, the Jigawa state capital.
Comrade Isa Mustapha explained that, some of the agencies recorded less than ten percent performance, while agencies like the islamic education board and the state tertiary education board recorded zero releases in the third quarter of 2023, despite an overall performance in quarter 1-3 of 20 percent and 34 percent respectively.
He said, the health sector has continued to record low budget performance since 2016, adding that so far only N201 million has been released to the sector.
He pointed out that, with the recurrent trend of budget releases, achieving 80 percent budget performance may be difficult for the State.
He stressed the urgent need for the state Ministry of Health and Education to make concerted effort to access their budget.
According to him, the low budget releases may hamper the state effort towards achieving its objectives.
He called on the state House of Assembly committees on health, appropriation, basic, and higher education to strengthen their budget oversight by raising quarterly budget performance reports.
The NGO urged all stakeholders, particularly the executive, legislative, agencies, civil society organizations, and the media, to work hard to achieve the target for the benefit of all and sundry.
Comrade Mustapha also suggested that agencies should work hard and identify other solutions as conducting refresher training on Memo Writing, organizing quarterly data validation of performance reports by the ministry of budget and economic planning .
