The Presidency has explained why it allocated N3.219billion for upgrade of equipment and facilities at the State House Clinic.
This was just as it defended the N18.1 billion budget proposed for the State House in the 2016 N6.07 trillion national budget.
The Presidency said the N3.219 billion proposed for the clinic was meant for the completion of on-going projects as well as procurement of drugs and other medical equipment.
State House’s Permanent Secretary, Jala A. Arabi, who appeared before both chambers of the National Assembly to defend the budget proposal which was a significant increase from the N6.5 billion budgeted for the 2015 fiscal year, said that the N1,718,689.03 generated by the State House in 2015 fiscal year had been remitted into the government coffers.
Arabi, who appeared before the Senator Tijani Kaura-led Committee on Federal Character and Inter-governmental Affairs and Hon. Nasir Sani Zango-Daura’s House of Representatives Committee on Special Duties, said the budget was “prepared in line with the provisions of the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2007 and with due regard to the concept of Zero-Based Budgeting principle which seeks to justify infrastructural development across board.”
Arabi put the recurrent expenditure of the State House at N4,273,166.00 while proposing N12,266,713,072 for capital projects.
The Presidency, also, raised the alarm over what it described as grave implications of what it called a grossly inadequate N20 billion proposed budget for the Amnesty Programme in the budget document. Special Adviser to the President on Niger Delta/Coordinator of the amnesty programme, Brigadier General Paul T. Borah (retd), at a budget defence session with the Senate Committee on Niger Delta Affairs, disclosed that a significant number of the 30, 000 ex-Niger Delta militants currently under going training over seas would be adversely affeacted. (Daily Sun)
