The Rivers state House of Assembly has passed the 2020 Budget of N530, 813,357,619.
The House passed the budget on Friday after members debated on its highpoints at plenary.
The speaker, Ikuinyi Ibani, posed the question for the passage of the Budget which was unanimously approved by members present.
He said the passage of the budget would ensure the sustained development of the state from January to December, 2020.
“The House has approved the 2020 Budget of Rivers state. The clerk should liaise with the legal department to get a clean copy for presentation to the Rivers state governor for his assent,” he said.
According to him, House worked on the budget to create the platform for immediate implementation.
“In undertaking this sacrifice, we want to ensure that our people from first January have access to the dividends of democracy and the government will hit the ground running.”
The budget has a total recurrent expenditure of N156, 659,436569, while capital expenditure is N374, 153,920,743.
Governor Nyesom Ezenwo Wike had presented the budget proposal to the Assembly on December 17, 2019, saying: “The substantial increase in capital over recurrent expenditure once again reflects and underscores our commitment to direct more resources to the growth and productive sectors of our economy.”
The governor proposed the sum of N49.471 billion to fund the education sector for 2020, saying: “This sum represents 20% of the total budget and is the highest ever budgetary allocation to education, reflecting the level of our commitment to investing in the future of our children.”
Continuing, he said, “In 2020, we will continue to ensure the systematic rehabilitation, upgrade and transformation of our primary, secondary and tertiary institutions and build new ones where the population demands to deliver a more conducive learning environment across schools in Rivers state. For basic education, we will promptly access the contributory grant from the federal government and deploy same to improve access, standards and quality.
“We will also continue to improve access to ICT infrastructure, employ more teachers to further reduce the teacher/learners’ ratio, especially in English Language, Mathematics, Science and technology and ensure the training and retraining of teachers to deliver measurable results and outstanding outcomes in our primary and secondary schools.”
