– This country has never achieved more than 40% budget performance
The Periscope Reporter
* Lawmakers aren’t supposed to be involved in infrastructures and provision of basic necessities to the constituents but for the lacuna of poor budgeting procedure
Ex-Deputy Speaker, State House of Assembly and House of Representatives Member representing Numan/Demsa/Lamurde Federal Constituency, Southern Senatorial District, Adamawa State, Northeast Nigeria Kwamoti B. La’ori lamented that poor budget implementation retards growth of the country’s economy.
The La’ori disclosed this while addressing journalists in Yola, following the inauguration of some solar-powered boreholes, a computer centre, a town hall and examination halls in Lafia, Demsa, Ndem, Imburu, Bali and Kpasham, constituencies of Lamurde/Demsa/Numan local government areas.
Giving his reasons, the lawmaker revealed that Members of the House of Representatives get an allocation of N100m each to execute projects in their constituencies but the money released is hardly beyond N80m of the N100m allocated.
“When you go into our core mandates, we are not supposed to be involved in infrastructures and provision of basic necessities to our constituents. But because of the lacuna of poor budgeting procedure, which has failed in tying policy plans to needs assessment, we have to step in and fill in the gaps that government has left open in terms of service delivery to our constituents.
“In terms of the money, every member of the House of Representatives is given an envelope of N100m. This money is used to execute the popular constituency intervention project,” Laori said.
Laori also decried what he described as the under-performance of the country’s annual budget.
He said, “This country has never achieved more than 40 per cent budget performance. You can quote me anywhere.
“You have budgets enacted year-in and year-out, being repeated and bloated and yet not being achieved; because we don’t follow our projections. We bloat the system and we don’t prioritise.”