For the second time, the governor of Oyo State, Engineer Seyi Makinde has shown that he is ready to uplift educational standards in his state.
He displayed this as he presented the sum of ₦266,644,273,305.04 to the state’s House of Assembly as 2021 Appropriation.
The 2021 Appropriation, which was tagged Budget of Continued Consolidation, was held on Monday in the state’s assembly, Secretariat, Ibadan.
Governor Makinde, while breaking down the budget, presented a sum of N136,262,990,009.41 as recurrent expenditure.
While capital expenditure budget was 130,381,283,295.63.
For the second consecutive years, education sector took the larger percentage of the 2021 Appropriation with budgetary allocation of N56,348,375,635.55.
The figure represents 21% of the total budget, which according to the governor is an increase of about 12 billion naira over last year’s budget.
The governor explained that in order to ensure reduction in infrastructure deficit, he made budgetary provision of N46,067,695,661.13 for infrastructure.
He added that the allocation represents 17.27% of the total budget sum, an increase from 33.66 billion naira for infrastructure in the last year’s budget.
Governor Makinde disclosed that his administration has made significant progress in the actualisation of his plans for the state by been able to lower infrastructural deficit, make improvements in healthcare delivery, improve the quality of education and achieve milestones in the security systems.
He said that his plan is to increase the annual Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) by widening the tax net to bring in more taxpayers into the system without increasing the taxes.
“Oyo State’s IGR is presently about 32% of actual aggregate revenue. We still have not achieved a total dependence on the state income outside of federal allocation to fund the budget. Slowly, but surely, we are getting there.
“For the 2021 Budget, our plan is to increase our annual IGR to 102,824,207,213.46.
“We hope to achieve this by widening the tax net to bring in more taxpayers into the system,” Governor Makinde said.
In his remark, the Speaker of state’s assembly, Hon. Adebo Ogundoyin assured the people of the state of the readiness of the lawmakers to work with the executive and relevant stakeholders to ensure not less than 70% budget performance.
“I make bold to say that the budget proposal is not strange to us because we have been part of the process together and at the constituency level.
“We hereby pledge our renewed commitment to ensuring and promoting budget performance through our constitutional oversight functions,” the Speaker said.
Meanwhile, Chairman Committee on Finance, Budget and Appropriation in the House, Hon. Mustapha Akeem, promised that the House will ensure speedy passage of the Appropriation Bill to meet up with the timeline proposed by the governor.
The budget presentation was witnessed by the paramount traditional rulers in the state including the Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi, Olubadan of Ibadan, Oba Saliu Adetunji and Aseyin of Iseyin, Oba Abdulganiy Adekunle and many other political, religious leaders as well as government functionaries.
Packaged by Kunle Gazali
