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Ahead of the passage of the Lagos State's N403.401billion Y2008 Appropriation Bill, the State Governor, Mr. Babatunde Fashola (SAN), weekend set agenda for implementation of the budget. Thus, he scheduled weekly meetings with all the internal revenue generation agencies in the state.
Ahead of the passage of the Lagos State's N403.401billion Y2008 Appropriation Bill, the State Governor, Mr. Babatunde Fashola (SAN), weekend set agenda for implementation of the budget. Thus, he scheduled weekly meetings with all the internal revenue generation agencies in the state.
The meeting held for the third time on Friday is aimed at laying a proper financial foundation for the implementation of the budget. The governor also ordered all the state's ministries to do preparatory works towards the implementation of the budget as it concerns them.
Addressing representatives of the state's revenue generating agencies at the meeting Friday, Fashola charged them to ensure that all paper works relating to the implementation of the budget were submitted to him even as the Budget is being seriously considered by the House of Assembly, adding that they should work on the assumption that 60 to 70 per cent of the projects in the budget would pass through the State House of Assembly.
'All paper works must leave the governor's table on or before the end of January. All paper works in the half year must be off the shelf within the next four weeks", the governor directed.
He disclosed that the Executive Council has set up a team of experts 'who have budget-related experience in Financing, Construction, Information Technology, and Tax matters as well as Civil works, to handle all the proposals that come for contracts. The committee, headed by the Commissioner for Finance, will report to him at the end of its work, the Governor said.
Setting the modalities for the implementation of the budget, the governor advised them to take, as priority, projects started last year but yet to be completed, adding: 'If you have a basket of ten projects consisting four uncompleted and six new projects, I will expect you, in the first half of the year, to bring up the four uncompleted and two new projects for execution".
According to the governor, government is a continuum and 'the liability of projects inherited from past administration is our responsibility to complete them", adding, 'If we do not complete them, we fail the team before us because they will look us in the face and say very proudly, ‘we started it".
Citing the Abraham Adesanya Housing Estate (formerly Jubilee HousingEstate), which was started by Sir Michael Otedola but advanced by Asiwaju Bola Tinubu's administration, the Teslim Balogun Stadium and the new Lagos House in Ikeja started by Admiral Okhai Mike Akhigbe, Fashola declared, 'There is no such thing as ‘It is for the last administration'. It is now our project."