From Scholastica Hir, Makurdi
The 10th Benue State House of Assembly has passed the 2024 supplementary budget of N170, 894, 473,135.
The House passed the budget during yesterday’s plenary after its clause by clause consideration.
The supplementary budget brings the 2024 budget to a total of N396, 621, 868,343 from the initial approved budget of N225,727,395,206,97 only.
According to the budget passed, the recurrent expenditure has been increased by N10,586,740,000, bringing the total recurrent expenditure to N155, 647, 410,359, while the capital expenditure was untouched and still maintained N240, 974, 457, 983.
The House called on Benue State Budget and Planning Commission to consult with public sector entities (PSEs) before any budget is to be revised in order to capture their inputs just as they also urged the state Ministry of Finance to ensure prompt release of budgetary approvals to MDAs for improved performance in their operations.
It also called on the state government to ensure that MDAs maintain their appropriate nomenclature to avoid role conflict that may affect proper codification of the state budget at the Nigeria Governors Forum.
Earlier in a lead debate, chairman, House Standing Committee on Appropriation, Cephas Dyako, while presenting findings of the committee, said there was an extra budgetary expenditure on recurrent expenditure and overhead cost by public sector entities and stated that most MDAs performed poorly due to non release of funds.
Clerk of the House, Mr. Bernard Nule, accordingly read the bill for the third time and it was passed into law by the Speaker, Aondona Dajoh.
The House also directed the chairman and the management of Benue State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) to conduct the planned aptitude test for applicants to be recruited as primary school teachers in their various local governments.
The directive is to decentralise the exercise to cushion the effect of the present economic hardship experienced by the people.
The Minority Leader, Michael Audu, representing Adoka-Ugboju state constituency, had moved a motion of urgent public importance drawing the attention of the house to the exercise and drawing the attention to the publication by SUBEB inviting all applicants for primary school teachers’ recruitment to Makurdi for computer based test (CBT).
He sought the intervention of the House and suggested the decentralisation of the exercise in order to save the applicants the cost involved to transport themselves from far distance to Makurdi, the state capital for the exercise.
The Majority Chief Whip, Mr. Peter Ipusu, representing Katsina-Ala West, seconded the motion and appealed to the chairman and the management of SUBEB to use civil rules in the recruitment exercise.
Majority leader, Saater Tiseer disagreed with the planned computer based test and maintained that until schools in the state were equipped with computer facilities, it would not be possible. He urged SUBEB to use other ways to conduct the test.
Alfred Emberga, Deputy Whip and member representing Makurdi North state constituency, advised that the employment should be done based on merit and distributed fairly across the 23 local governments, while member representing Mata state constituency, Simon Gabo said the world has gone digital and that the test should be done online without subjecting the applicants to more sufferings.
The speaker disagreed with the idea of sharing the proposed number of teachers equally among the 23 local government areas of the state as raised by the deputy whip, and ruled that some local government areas have more schools than others and that the sharing formula should be based on that factor.
