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| TEXT OF THE YEAR 2008 BUDGET SPEECH PRESENTED BY MR. GOVERNOR OF EKITI STATE, ENGR SEGUN ADEBAYO ONI, TO THE EKITI STATE HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY ON 14TH DECEMBER, 2007 The Right Honourable Speaker,The Honourable Deputy Speaker of the House,The Honourable Members of the House,The Clerk of the House,Gentlemen of the Press,Ladies and Gentlemen. On 17th August, 2007 when I presented the Supplementary Budget for 2007, I re-emphasized in my inaugural speech of 29th May, 2007 that this administration will direct all efforts towards fighting poverty with passion and accelerating the economic emancipation and development of our people. I also emphasized that our efforts will be geared towards social justice, transparency and accountability at all levels of governance. We have tried in the last seven months to give a new face to governance by emphasizing service delivery, infrastructural rejuvenation and the creation of investment friendly environment in keeping with our PDP manifesto and our campaign theme: EDUCATION, ENTERPRISE & DEVELOPMENT. Mr. Speaker sir, and distinguished honourable members of the house, I feel much delighted today to present to you the budget of the year 2008 with a total size of TABLE 1:- SHOWING THE REVENUE PERFORMANCE OF THE 2007 BUDGET AS AT OCTOBER, 2007
Mr. Speaker Sir, despite our assuming office in the second half of the year, this administration has been able to redirect governance to peoples’ oriented programmes which have direct impact on the lives of our people and which are geared towards rejuvenating economic growth. Permit me to state a few of the landmark achievements recorded in the last six months. PROVISION OF WATER In-spite of the presence of huge surface water resources in Ekiti and the existence of large dams, a large segment of our people had no access to potable water as past administrations concentrated efforts at reaching few places with boreholes and water tankers. On our assumption of office, only 12% of the population had access to water, while public taps had been dry in many areas of Ekiti North, South and Central Senatorial districts for upward of 15 years!. You are all living witness to the good news that within 3 months of our administration, water has begun to flow from public taps in 14 Local Governments including places which had never experienced water supply. They are Ikole, Oye, Ijero, Ekiti-West, Ido-Osi, Ilejemeje, Moba, Ado, Ireopdun/Ifelodun, Ise, Efon, Gbonyin, Ekiti-South-West Local Governments. The expansion of Ireje Waterworks and additional treatment plant for Ado Ekiti has commenced while contracts for the provision of 100 solar powered boreholes has been awarded. All these efforts have increased access to water by the people to over 55%. We are not resting on our oars until all our people get water.HEALTH SERVICEOur free health service strategy has been to reach out to the masses through a monthly intervention addressing specific areas of health needs such as eye care, occupational health issues, general surgery of major and minor ailments such as, hernia, fibroid, goitre, urinal disease. In the last six months we have conducted two (2) eye camps, two festival of surgery, free-health examination and mass deworming for all school children in the State. Remarkably, perhaps the largest festival of surgery is currently on-going to reach out to 1000 of our people in need of urgent and live saving surgery. For this purpose 25 experts arrived the state from United States of America and were joined by our equally competent professionals in the health sector in Nigeria for this huge intervention. Resulting from these interventions our Direct Individual Benefit (DIB) Index (i.e. Those who have benefited directly from our government service) in the health sector shows that about 159,792 people have been reached directly, based on the following statistics: Health screening & Deworming - 87,382; Drugs 65,722; General & Eye surgery 688 persons, and Free Eye glasses 6,000 persons. This means that one out of four families have been touched by our health intervention. EDUCATIONWorried by the retrogressing state of our educational system, our administration in consultation with stakeholders re- introduced boarding schools in Senior Secondary Schools so as to get our students concentrate more on their studies as well as take advantages of school socialization, moral regeneration and discipline associated with boarding school. For this optional policy, twenty (20) schools enlisted to participate in the programme and I am pleased to inform you that the affected schools have reopened after massive rehabilitation of the structures in the schools. To make the schools affordable, the school fees was reduced from N10,000 to N8,500 with Government taking on the huge subsidy in feeding, hostel, medicals including Typhoid vaccine etc. In the area of Information Technology (IT), our administration attracted the support of Education Trust Fund (ETF) and MTN Foundation with donation of Four Computer Laboratories each, located in 8 secondary schools. In the coming year, Government will invest heavily in IT for our schools to get our pupils take advantage of the information age. ROADSWe have recently launched a Road Revolution designed to confront headlong the paucity of good road infrastructure in the state. As you are all aware we have awarded contracts though a painstakingly transparent process for the rehabilitation/reconstruction of 25 roads covering over 340 km ,more than the total roads covered by previous regimes since creation of Ekiti state. We have also awarded the contract for the dualisation of the ADO –IWOROKO- IFAKI Road. Although a Federal road, this road is critical to the economic and social life of our people. The contractors have moved to site despite not receiving initial mobilization fees. The road projects from past regimes for which we inherited N4.06 billion are also being executed with contractors mobilized to return to site. Further details on the roads have been given elsewhere in this budget presentation. However, permit me to draw attention to a remarkable development concerning our commitment to quality road development and value for public money. Using our recent Road contract award as a bench mark, our average cost per km for Asphalt Road was N31.12m. This is very competitive by all standards. For quality assurance on the roads, contractors have been made to swear to Affidavit of quality guaranty for 5 years for Asphalt on laterite base and 7 years for Asphalt stone base. POVERTY REDUCTIONSince our assumption of office, we have confronted the scourge of poverty ravaging our people through our Micro-credit programme designed to improve the capacity of our people to generate income from their individual productive ventures. So far using the Consolidated Poverty Reduction Agency, We have reached out to many of our grassroot people and market women with various sums ranging from N10,000 - N100,000 WELFARE OF PUBLIC SERVANTS AND RETIREES This Administration has substantially uplifted the welfare of our public servants with the more than 17 % increase in salary and allowances granted since June this year. This is in addition to increase in housing loan from N500,000 to N1.5m and car loan from N80,000 to N1.5m. The disparities in welfare package between public servants and teachers have also been redressed. Mr. Speaker Sir, distinguished honourable members, I am pleased to inform you that our determination to eradicate Post Retirement Poverty (PRP) in Ekiti has been vigorously pursued with the payment of gratuity arrears which have accumulated since 1994 to all retired public servants and teachers. So far about N1.78bhas been paid to offset the arrears. The last batch will be paid before Christmas. With this unenviable record of indebtedness to our retirees now wiped clean, public servants can from now on look into their retirement with happiness of a prosperous living after service. From year 2008, every retiring civil servant will collect his gratuity 60 days after retirement unfailingly. TABLE 3: SHOWING PAYMENT OF PENSION/GRATUITIES
THE YEAR 2008 BUDGET Mr. Speaker Sir, The year 2008 BUDGET is a substantial departure from past budgets in this State and perhaps even in the country in many respect as it has been designed to change the architecture of governance: First, this budget makes provision for fiscal autonomy for the legislative and judicial arms of government within the ambit of due process, Second, for the first time, capital expenditure outweighs recurrent expenditure, (in-fact, almost twice the size) thusswinging the structure of public expenditure to areas that touch on the lives of the people, rather maintaining government machinery,Third, Persons with Disability (PWD) i.e. the disabled, have a direct share of public expenditure In general terms, the Budget of New Beginning seeks to radically transform the infrastructural and economic base of our dear State. Specifically, the budget has the following policy thrusts: POLICY THRUST OF THE YEAR 2008 BUDGET(i) Expansion of the internal revenue base through a pragmatic approach;(ii) Reducing the level of unemployment with the ultimate goal of alleviating poverty;(iii) Improvement in the quality of education;(iv) Promotion of economic activities through support for Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SME);(v) Maintenance of effective, efficient and well motivated public service to enhance productivity;(vi) Close supervision and monitoring of all government projects;(vii) Ensuring budget discipline through Due process, proper utilization and monitoring of income and expenditure of government;(viii) Increase the effectiveness and functionality of the health sector with a view to improving the quality of health care delivery;(ix) Improvement in Socio-economic infrastructures such as rural/urban roads, rural/urban water supply and rural electrification;(x) Provision of enabling environment for food security, agro-based industries with immense private sector participation;(xi) Promotion of collaborative planning and execution of projects with all the tiers of government, including the communities;(xii) Promotion of transparency, probity and accountability and;(xiii) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
