Niger assembly approves N65.5bn budget for LGs

The Niger state House of Assembly has approved N65.5 billion as the budget for the 25 local government councils in the state for the 2020 fiscal year.

The budget is made up of N45.9 billion recurrent expenditure and N19.6 capital expenditure.

The recurrent expenditure include N18.5 billion for personnel cost, N8.2 billion for overhead cost and N19 billion for consolidated fund charges while the capital expenditure include N4 billion counterpart funding and N15.5 distributable capital.

The approval of the local governments budget is sequel to the presentation and adoption of the report of the joint House Committee on Local Government, Chieftaincy Affairs and Planning and Appropriation during plenary.

Presenting the report, Chairman of the joint committee, Shuaibu Iya observed that some local government councils in the state are not performing optimally in terms of revenue generation due to the security challenges that they have.

He however, stressed the need for the councils to work hard in expanding and improving their revenue base in order to generate more resources for their developmental projects, notwithstanding the security challenges.

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Iya further observed that the problem bedevilling the level of performance of capital project in local governments is the huge salary wage bill of the councils, adding that there are so many workers that do not have schedule of duties.

“There are so many workers in the local government areas that do not have a schedule of duty. This is the problem bedevilling the local government councils in the state and if we say we should purge any of them or decide to reduce the size of the staff, it will raise another political issue,” the lawmaker observed.

He further said that it was also observed that most local government councils undertake projects without giving effect to the laid down procedures while the majority are planning on embarking on projects that have religious bearing such as the construction of mosques and churches.

The joint committee then recommended that local government councils should not undertake projects that are within the jurisdiction of the state or federal governments, but should restrict themselves to their constitutional responsibility.