Senate passes N271b budget for FCT

The Senate on Tuesday passed a budget of N271 billion for the Federal Capital Territory for the 2014 fiscal year.
The Senate, however, called for faster development of the territory by the Federal Capital Territory Administration.
In the budget passed for the FCT, N161,804,111,031 was earmarked for capital expenditure and N109,238,434,881 for recurrent expenditure.
A breakdown of the recurrent component shows that N60,03,490,023 billion is for overhead costs, while N49,200,944,858 is for personnel costs.
According to the report of the Senate Committee on the FCT, which did the final legislative work on the proposal, the capital provision will take care of capital projects for the service of the FCT, which includes: expansion and rehabilitation of Airport and Kubwa Expressways and the provision of infrastructure in districts such as Jahi, Wuye, Maitama Extension and Abuja North-West.
While presenting the report of FCT committee to the Senate ahead of the passage, the Vice Chairman of the committee, Senator Domingo Obende, said N16 billion was earmarked for the development of the health sector, including the provision of free antenatal treatment and ante retro-viral drugs for HIV/AIDS patients.
In the report presented by Senator Obende, N6 billion was allocated for security administration of the nation’s political capital in 2014.
The decision of the Senate to give priority attention to security was informed by the increasing security challenges in the FCT, especially with the recent bomb attacks that took place at the city centre and some suburbs of the territory.
For the health sector, the Senate approved N16 billion.
Obende noted that the health facilities in Abuja were being overstretched by the population explosion being witnessed in the territory recently, especially with the recent bomb blasts in Nyanya and EMAB Plaza in Wuse 2 of the FCT that induced congestion in the various hospitals in Abuja.
Other highlights of the approved budget proposal included N5 billion earmarked for Education, N3 billion for Agriculture and N4 billion for rural development.
Many of the senators who made contributions before the passage of the budget argued that the budget provisions were in line with the needed development in the territory.
But the Senate President, David Mark, said the rate of development in FCT ought to be faster than it is at present and urged the authorities concerned to make judicious use of the passed budgetary provisions when cash backed by the executive arm of government for the needed level of development in the Federal Capital Territory.
Mark said: “Yes, going by realities on ground, FCT is developing but its rate of development ought to be faster than it is now, which means that capital project provisions in this budget must be implemented to the letter for FCT to move to the level it supposed to be as far as development is concerned.”