Governor Babatunde Fashola of Lagos State has written the state House of Assembly seeking approval to reorder the 2014 budget
of the state to meet compelling demands for public services to the citizens which in the governor’s words “cannot wait till 2015”.
The 2014 budget was N489.69 billion.
The letter titled ‘Y2014 Budget Re-ordering of Priorities’ was read on the floor of the House yesterday by Ganiyu Abiru, the clerk.
The re-ordering, according to the governor, is to take care of emerging issues like the reversal of LASU school fees policy “which requires us to make provisions to cover LASU shortfall in projected revenues in order to service the school; the unanticipated but very urgent need to address the threat of the Ebola virus epidemic and also a need for counterpart funding request that enables us to
access developmental funds to install solar power panels in 172 public schools and 11 primary health centres in the first phase”.
Fashola last week reverted the increase in LASU school fees to between N195,000 and N350,000 to N25,000 in what, he said, was necessitated by the current economic realities.
Before the governor’s decision, students and staff of the university had been protesting against the increase which, they argued, was above the reach of the ordinary Nigerians.
The re-ordering will not affect the original budget size of N489.69 billion as “we have discovered that there are still unutilised provisions by some MDAs, which may remain so till year end. Hence we are proposing to move such provisions to where they are more urgently needed to enable the state government address pressing needs” in the areas identified above and other areas like security, housing etc.
The re-ordering, Fashola explained, further is proposed from capital expenditure provisions of tenagencies with a total value of N9.960 billion.
The governor said the re-ordering is to urgently address some of the critical unbudgeted expenditure requests by various ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs)
