Abia Assembly passes N5.9bn supplementary budget
By Anayo Okoli
Umuahia—ABIA State House of Assembly has passed a supplementary budget of N5.9 billion, bringing to N71.6 billion the total approved appropriation for 2010 fiscal year.
Deputy Speaker of the House, Chief Alwell Okere, who announced the passage of the appropriation bill into law, while interacting with journalists, disclosed further that the House also passed into law Abia State Contingency Fund with a provision of N2 billion.
According to Okere, who doubles as the House Committee Chairman on Information and Strategy, said the Contingency Fund is designed to take care of emergency matters and incidents not covered in the budget.
It will be recalled that Abia State House of Assembly increased the state’s appropriation bill for 2010 from the initial budget figure of N60, 526, 563 sent to it by Governor Theodore Orji to N65, 702, 309, but the House said it increased the budget outlay to capture the revenue from excess crude.
The deputy speaker also announced that the House currently had four bills before it, which include the state Infrastructural Development Fund, which he said had gone through second reading; review of the State House of Assembly Service Commission; Abia State Urban and Regional Bill, which is expected to bring sanity in the manner structures, including motor parks and markets, spring up in the state, especially in Aba and Umuahia.
Okere further said that the House had been seriously engaged in steps aimed at ensuring that students of the state university who had been out of class rooms on account of the prolonged strike by their teachers returned to school.
The House spokesman clarified the issue of MOT bill, saying the bill had not been passed and that the bill could not be passed until a public hearing was conducted for people to make inputs into it.
According to Okere, if the MOT bill is passed as it is, it may give officials of the Works and Transport Ministry the opportunity to harass people.
However, Vanguard observed that despite the fact that the bill is yet to be passed, officials of the state Ministry of Works and Transport had been harassing motorists, including visitors, by arresting them and demanding for sundry papers.
