Gov. of Lagos state  The much -awaited 2019 budget for Lagos State was finally presented and laid before the Assembly by Governor Akinwunmi Ambode on Tuesday. The low- key ceremony was devoid of all the fanfare that usually accompanied budget presentation in the state. Ambode said a total budget size of N852.31b was meant to consolidate on the economic achievements of the administration in the past three and half years. Recurrent Expenditure is N389.56 while Capital Expenditure of the year stands at N462.47. Details shortly…

Nigeria Needs $337bn to Implement SDGs from 2019 to 2022, UN Reveals Nigeria needs nothing less than 337 billion dollars to implement the Sustainable Development Goals from 2019 to 2022, the UN Support Plan for the Sahel has estimated. The cost of implementing the SDGs in Nigeria, according to the plan is 80.65 billion dollars in 2019, 82.83 billion dollars in 2020, 85.07 billion dollars in 2021 and 87.37 billion dollars in 2022. On the investment needs in the Sahel, the plan reported the cost of implementing the SDGs in the Sahel is projected to be between 140.25 billion dollars and 157.39 billion dollars per year between 2019 and 2022 in the 10 Sahelian countries. The plan said the 10 countries under the UN Integrated Strategy for the Sahel needed an average of 148.7 billion dollars annually to implement the SDGs or 594.8 billion dollars from 2018 to 2022. The overarching goal of the Plan, targeting 10 countries; namely Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, The Gambia, Gu...

Why We Are Releasing N1.1trillion by End of December: FG The Minister of Finance, Mrs Zainab Ahmed, says the Federal Government is working towards ensuring it pushes its releases for capital projects from the 2018 budget to N1.1 trillion by the end of December. The minister said this while answering questions at the public presentation of the 2019 budget highlights on Thursday in Abuja. President Muhammadu Buhari, while presenting the 2019 Budget estimates to a joint session of the National Assembly on Wednesday, said that in spite of the delay in the passage of the 2018 Budget, N820.57 billion had been released for capital projects as at Dec. 14. He unveiled a federal budget of N8.83 trillion for the 2019 fiscal year, N300 billion lower than the N9.1 billion being implemented for the current fiscal year. According to Buhari, N4.04 trillion or 50.31 per cent is earmarked for recurrent expenditure and N2.03 trillion representing 22.98 per cent earmarked for capital projec...

Former Senate President Reveals Why Buhari Was Booed by Lawmakers Third Republic Senate President, Senator Ameh Ebute, has revealed why some members of the National Assembly booed President Muhammadu Buhari during the 2019 budget presentation on Wednesday. He said that the lawmakers who booed President Buhari did so because of constituency projects. According to him, the lawmakers’ action might have been caused by Buhari’s failure to allow the them to dip their hands into the national treasury. The former lawmaker said that booing a president was unprecedented in history of democracy in the country. He expressed dissatisfaction over the incident, insisting that the lawmakers’ action did not demonstrate mature conduct of people who were supposed to be members of the National Assembly: Senators and honourable members. Ebute said the concerned lawmakers thought that they wanted to disgrace the president when in actual fact, they ended up disgracing themselves.