Niger Delta
A’Ibom Speaker Assures On People-Friendly Programmes
Speaker of
Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly, Mr. Onofiok Luke, has pledged to ensure the implementation of people-friendly programmes that would have positive impact on the lives of the people.
The Speaker also pledged to make the legislature people friendly in the budgeting process as well as continue to conduct public hearing sessions to ensure public participation in the budgeting process.
Luke, at the Citizens Forum on the 2016 Akwa Ibom State budget, organised by Policy Alert, a non-governmental organisation, NGO, yesterday, said that the public hearing initiated by the Assembly was to enable the people make inputs to the budgeting process.
Speaking through an official from the Legal Department of the Assembly, Mr. Bassey Umoren, the Speaker described the 2016 budget as performance-based, maintaining that the allocation to the various sectors of the state depended on revenue generation capacity.
“Our goal is to have a budget that will have an impact on the people. The 2016 budget has taken a different approach due to the fall in the price of oil but we are ready to hear suggestions from the public to make it realisable,” he said.
Also speaking, the Head of Policy Alert, organisers of the event, Tijah Akpan, lauded the state House of Assembly for ensuring that the public had a voice in the budgeting process even as he observed that the quality of participation of the people should have improved if adequate notice was given to them.