By Juliana Katung
Kaduna (Nigeria) — Kaduna State House of Assembly, northern Nigeria on Wednesday approved the sum of N216.6 billion as the 2018 budget .
This shows a slight increase over the 216.5 submitted to the Assembly by Governor Nasir El-Rufai.
The passage came after the House of Assembly adopted a report on the budget presented by its Committee on Appropriation and implementation.
The House increased the sum of N100 million following a request from the Health Sector to fund the Barau Dikko Teaching Hospital for proper functioning, making the recurrent expenditure to stand as N85.4 and the capital as N131.2
Speaking in an interview with Assembly correspondents, the speaker of the House, Mr. Aminu Abdullahi Shagali said the 2018 budget priority areas are education, Health and road construction.
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He assured that, the Assembly as usual will carry out an oversight function to ensure strict implementation of the budget.
Also, the chairman, House Committee on Appropriation and implementation, Ahmed Mohammed Chokali said the increase was necessary in order to assist the Health Sector to enable the Baurau Dikko Teaching Hospital carry out its activities effectively.
According to him, request made by others Ministries, Agencies and Parastatals were done internally within its appropriation by moving funds from other less important provision to the most important.
Ahmad said before the budget was passed, it had undergone proper scrutiny where all MDA’s met with the proper committees to clear gray areas and this made the passage of the budget to be prompt.
