Lagos Assembly Slams LG Bosses Over Bloated Budgets

The Lagos State House of Assembly, western Nigeria, has frowned at what it calls a funny trend where council chairmen in the state now compete with unrealistic, but overbloated budgets.

The House said it had discovered that chairmen of the 20 Local Government Councils and the 37 Local Council Development Areas, LCDAs, in the state have now adopted a system where they want to outdo each other with huge budget proposals.

Members of the House Committee on Local Government Administration and Chieftaincy Affairs who raised this concern, expressed dismay at the practice, saying the council chairmen, while presenting their budgets, do not even consider how they would fund the huge proposals.

According to the committee members, all the council chairmen care about is for their budget estimates to be larger than the estimates of their colleagues, adding that this is the major reason they are often accused of underperformance.

None of the 57 councils presented a budget estimate of less than N1.5 billion for the 2013 financial year.

The committee members who are on tour of local government councils in the state lamented the development when they visited the Mainland Local Government Council and the Bariga LCDA yesterday.

At the Mainland local council, the lawmakers were informed that the council had projected N2.3 billion as budget for 2013, but that it had only achieved N163 million of the capital expenditure which the council treasurer, Mrs. Deborah Oluwatosin Hambolu, put at 37 percent.

The council officials also said that in the last six months, they have generated N31.6 million as internally generated revenue thus forcing the lawmakers to wonder how the council could effectively fund the budget figure for the year.

At the Bariga LCDA, the committee was told that the council budget for 2013 is above N2 billion, but the council officials said the council had achieved about 50 percent performance.

A member of the committee, Avoseh Hodewu Suru, told Oladele Adekanye Rufus and Suleiman Omoyele, chairman of Mainland council and the Bariga LCDA respectively, to help caution their colleagues to henceforth desist from such actions.

“It is of no use preparing an overbloated budget and under-performing. It is better to under-estimate and then come back for budget amendment when you generate more than your estimate.

“Overbloating gives you bad name,” he told them.

He said the figure presented by the council chairmen gave the impression to the public that they have enough money and where their estimation is not realised, the people conclude that the chairmen are not working.

Ipoola Omisore, another member of the committee, said the committee may invite the council chairmen to educate them on budget preparation.

“You don’t say because another council chairman presented N3 billion as budget, you must also do same or even exceed him.

“This issue of billions has to be stopped from the next budget because people who hear the figures always think the money has been given. They won’t know that it is just a projection that is unrealistic,” he said.

The committee, however, commended the two council chairmen for their achievements in the last seven months of its earlier visit while expressing anger at the absence of the chairman of Yaba LCDA, Jide Jimoh, despite being aware of the committee’s visit.

The committee which got to Yaba council at about 1.30pm, left in anger, saying Jimoh, a former lawmaker in the state, should know the importance of the Assembly’s oversight functions.

—Eromosele Ebhomele