By Juliana Katung
Kaduna( Nigeria)-The Kaduna State House of Assembly, Northwest Nigeria, Tuesday, resolved to scrutinize and ensure strictly implementation of the 2018 budget.
The House of Assembly gave the assurance when it began its legislative process this Tuesday on the Estimates of N216.5 billion presented to it a week ago.
The budget document which was presented to the House by the State Governor Nasir El-Rufai has N85.4 billion as the recurrent expenditure, while N131.1 billion goes for capital expenditure.
It has passed through the second stage and now referred to the House Committee on Appropriation and implementation of the Assembly for further study, and then report back to the House on 14, November, 2017.
Giving the highlights on the budget estimate, the Majority Leader of the House, Muhammad Inuwa (Doka/Gabasawa) requested that the lawmakers should proceeded with the necessary legislative work on the estimate.
In his Contribution during the debate at the floor of the House, a member representing Kagarko Constituency who is also the chairman House committee on Information, Deacon Nuhu Goroh Shadalafiya stressed need for the House to ensure that the needful was done in order to achieve the estimated revenue as well strict implementation and not to only consider the passage a lone.
According to him, the budget was very straight forward and alot of work needed to be done at the committee level, adding that the State Government was ready to put more efforts in internal generating revenue and therefore needed more support from the House so that the estimated figures could be realized and projects executed.
In a related development, the House moved to amend the Kaduna State Aids Control Agency (KADSACA) Law No. 6 of 2010 which was abolished by the Kaduna State Aids Control Agency to control the pandemic HIV and AIDS in the state.
The Majority leader , Inuwa while shedding more light on the proposed bill said that Under the former law, the supervision of the Agency was under the office of the governor.
. He added that the Governor and deputy Governor were named the Chairman and deputy Chairman of both the governing board of the Agency and the State Council on Aids.
” I am happy to bring to the knowledge of the Hon. House that from the inception of the Agency in 2010, huge success had been recorded in the fight against HIV and AIDS in the State with reduction in the prevalence rate from 11.6% in 2010 to 2.2% currently.”
As the Governor and his Deputy are always engaged in functions and activities both within and outside the state, it has become necessary to amend the Law to devolve the powers of the governor under the Law to the Commissioner of health and human services for a more effective supervision and control of the Agency”, the majority leader stated.
The Law was amended . Under it,
the Governor and the deputy Governor have been replaced by the Commissioner of Health and Human services as Chairman of the governing board of the Agency. The State Council on Aids has been abolished and the membership of the governing board has been streamlined to make it more effective and result oriented.
