LAGOS — Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly, Mr Adeyemi Ikuforiji, has urged other members of the House to scrutinise properly the 2012 budget presented by the state governor, Mr Babatunde Fashola and promptly approve it to enable residents begin to enjoy the dividends of democracy.

Ikuforiji, in a speech at the just concluded five-day retreat on “Governance through legislative performance and effective budgeting,” in Lagos also enjoined his colleagues to “pay more attention to our local governments to enable them to regain the confidence of our people and also ensure that we continue to put our people first in all that we do throughout our tenure.”

He said, “as the true representatives of our people from various constituencies of the state, I urge you my distinguished honourable colleagues to be more determined to record even greater achievements far above what all past legislative assemblies in Lagos State and indeed in Nigeria have had to their credit to date.

“Apart from the fact that we must not leave any stone unturned in our efforts to perform our oversight functions on the executive, we should equally wear our thinking caps in order to make this 7th Assembly the most pro-people and pro-development legislative house, not just in Lagos here but indeed across our great country.

“We should gird our loins in our determination to successfully eradicate poverty, unemployment and misery that have been confronting Lagos residents due to the worsening global economic woes and no efforts should be spared at mapping out an effective strategy that could help us in tackling the increasing poverty, unemployment and misery that have been confronting our people due to the worsening global economic woes”.