NAN-HE-15
Budget
By Zubairu Idris
Katsina, Dec. 12, 2017(NAN) Sen. Abdullahi Adamu, Chairman of the Northern Senators Forum( (NSF) on Tuesday underscored the need for the Federal Government’s 2018 budget to serve as a benchmark for appraising the impact of successive budgets on the people.
He gave the advice in Katsina at the opening of a two-day retreat.
He urged the lawmakers to do everything within their powers to improve education, agriculture and infrastructure development in the region in view of the current unacceptable level of poverty.
“I urge us to use the 2018 budget as a benchmark for assessing the impact of the Federal Government budgets on the North.
“We should interrogate the impact of the previous budgets on our three zones in terms of improved education, improved agricultural yield and infrastructural development.
“Poverty sits rather pretty in the North, this is not acceptable; it is within our powers as legislators and political leaders to make every federal budget have right impact on efforts to lift the North out of the poverty, educational backwardness and infrastructure deficit,’’ he said.
He also stressed the need for crimes such as kidnapping and unprovoked killings by herdsmen and cattle rustling, particularly in the Northwest to be discussed during the retreat.
“These are truly complicated matters but they are human problems created by human beings; they must be solved by human beings,’’ he said.
Gov. Abubakar Bagudu of Kebbi expressed dissatisfaction at the 2018 budgetary provision to agricultural sector which he described as “too little”.
“About N43 billion allocated to agriculture is too little, the Federal Government should put more funds in the sector.
“You should ask the Federal Government to increase allocation to the sector,’’ he urged.(NAN)
ZI/OSA/IA
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Edited by Shittu Obassa/Idris Abdulrahman