Jigawa Speaker, Clerk fiddle with cell phones, others doze off as Assembly okays 2022 budget

By Ahmed Rufa’i Dutse

The Jigawa State house of Assembly speaker, Rt. Honourable Idris Garba Kareka and the clerk of the house, Mal. Musa Aliyu Abubakar were caught fiddling with their cell phones while the 2022 appropriation bill of N177,795,588, 000
was being passed in to law.

The chairman house committee on appropriation, Honourable Suleiman Musa Kadira presented the committee’s report following which the lawmakers unanimously approved the report and passed it in to law.

The state appropriation was signed by the speaker shortly after that.
However, during the plenary some members of the public and newsmen who were at the gallery could not understand how the Speaker and the clerk would be engrossed in the social media while the all important function of consideration of the 2022 budget was going on.
Some of the persons at the gallery said they saw the two principal officers pressing their cell phones as if they were chatting, going through Facebook or playing games on the mobile phones.

It was gathered that the duo resorted to pressing their phones to keep themselves from the boredom occasioned by the presentation of the 20 page budget document for the state and 9 page document for the 27 local government councils making a total of 29 pages of the two reports.

It took the intervention of one of the members who tried to draw the speaker’s attention to the very obvious that he was creating attention and that he was being gazed at by many eyes from the gallery prompting him to quickly drop his cell phone
Some other members were caught dozing off making it to look like the bunch of the State Assembly members were not really attentive while the report on the state’s budget was being presented for consideration at the chamber.

However the house made some amendments, adjustment and recommendations in the budget as against the earlier copy presented by the state Governor Muhammad Badaru Abubakar.

The members had in the report recommended for an increase of N744 million to make their constituency project allocation N2.5 billion as they kicked against replacing 10 year old cars of the 27 local government chairmen.
Before passing the budget the house had acknowledged the contradiction and promised to make virement law after signing the budget by the executive.
Governor Badaru Abubakar had on Wednesday 10th November 2021, presented the sum of N177, 795,588,000 appropriation bill to the state House of Assembly for the 2022 fiscal year.

The budget which was tagged “Budget of Consolidation for Sustainable Socioeconomic Development”, succeeded the 2021 Budget of Sustained Economic Growth and Social Transformation”

Kadira in his presentation said the executive considered the whole sector of the economy and eventual improvement of the living standard of the teeming population of the state.
He said the personnel cost was earmarked the sum of N53b,035,588,00, recurrent expenditure N33b,923,000,000 while the capital development programmes was aggregated the sum of N90b,837,000,000.

Speaker of the House of Assembly Idris Garba Kareka commended the house committee on finance and appropriation for their efforts in considering the best budget.