BY SUZAN EDEH
Bauchi—A committee, Bauchi State Stakeholders’ Budget Working Group, under the auspices of Leadership, Empowerment, Advocacy and Development, LEAD, has lamented what it described as inability of government to capture some  capital projects which have direct bearing on the lives of the people in its yearly budget proposals.

LEAD  said the only way through which government can avoid omitting essential developmental projects in the budget was by creating a channel where it could interact with the communities to identify their needs.

The committee which comprised representatives of the state Ministries of Budget and Economic Planning; Local Government Affairs, Finance, Office of the Auditor-General for Local Governments, State House of Assembly, NGOs and media organizations said this, yesterday, at a one day advocacy and sensitization outreach on participatory budget, organized by LEAD, a USAID-funded project in Dass Local Government area of Bauchi State.

Chairman of the committee, Mr. Mohammed Bala, said: “Governments at all levels should create a forum with the communities, whereby they can know those fundamental projects that the people need.

’’Second, after identifying such important projects to be executed, the government should distribute the capital projects evenly across the communities.”

’’It only when this is done that capital projects which are important to the communities can be captured in the budget”.