By Haruna Salami
Apparently responding to the serious security challenges faced by Nigeria and the northern parts in particular, Governor Patrick Ibrahim Yakowa of Kaduna state has presented a “budget of Peace,
Unity and Growth” totaling N154, 331,452,763 for the 2012 fiscal year and about N18bn above that of 2011 of N136, 560, 380, 343.
Major highlights of the budget are: Peace and Security; Qualitative Education; Enhanced Agricultural Development and Poverty Alleviation; Improved Health Care Delivery; Infrastructural Development (Roads, Water and Power); Civil Service Reform; Enhanced Revenue generation; and Job creation for youth and women employment and empowerment.
Yakowa said the issues confronting the state in the above areas “are enormous but they are not insurmountable” adding that a transformation in these areas would require the collective effort and contribution of all and sundry and promised that they would constantly be reminded to be proactive knowing fully “that the place for peace and security can never be compromised for anything; that the poor performance in our academic institutions, especially in the primary and post primary institutions, for whatever reason(s), is not acceptable and has to be reversed; that the level of unemployment in the state where we are blessed with abundant opportunities for employment generation, especially in Agriculture for rain-fed/dry season farming, animal husbandry, poultry/fish farming, etc should be addressed head on; and hat the need to open up our rural areas with requisite infrastructure as well help beef-up power requirements, health facilities etc to support the productive base of our state economy should be squarely faced”.
The 2012 budget has a recurrent expenditure of N69, 374,840, 844 and a capital expenditure of N84, 956, 611, 919. Transport sector has the highest allocation of NN20,568,282,439 while education has N10,939,597,070 and agriculture has N8 625,283,445.
Surprisingly allocation for security was not made explicit. Security spending has become a subject of controversy in recent time in Kaduna state. Recently Yakowa’s principal private secretary, Yohana Allamagani reportedly said that the state government is spending a whooping sum of N300m weekly on security, amounting to N1.2bn monthly. This drew th wrath of the opposition Action Congress of Nigeria, CAN, which promptly called for Yakowa’s resignation. In a press release titled “The Tragedy of the Yakowa Administration” , CAN Kaduna state chapter says it views “the recent statement by the administration of Patrick Yakowa on the high cost of tackling security challenges in the state as reckless, and irresponsible”.