Ambode and ‘The Peoples Budget’

Not many Lagosians appeared to have scored the administration of Governor Akinwunmi Ambode high in the past seven months, after he came on board with a full load of promises bordering on putting smiles on the faces of Lagosians and adding value to their lives in line with manifesto of his party, the All Progressives […]

Not many Lagosians appeared to have scored the administration of Governor Akinwunmi Ambode high in the past seven months, after he came on board with a full load of promises bordering on putting smiles on the faces of Lagosians and adding value to their lives in line with manifesto of his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC).
 A lot of people were worried about the seemingly slow pace of the governor’s approach to governance and the apparent lack of a clear-cut roadmap on how he intended to fulfill his electoral promises. This made some people to even wonder if the governor had the ‘nerve’ to lead Lagos.
 For the umpteenth time, Governor Ambode had assured Lagosians that his administration meant well for them and that he would do his best to give them quality governance in exchange for the mandate they gave him in the last governorship election. He tried to demonstrate this in the 2016 budget he presented to the State House of Assembly last Thursday.
 The governor presented to the House for approval, a budget of N662.588 billion for the 2016 fiscal year. The budget was intended to assure Lagosians that the current administration was on top of its game and would deliver on its promises to the people. Christened ‘The Peoples Budget,’ it was the first full budget of the present administration.
 From the N662.588 billion budgeted for the 2016 fiscal year, the sum of N278.909 billion would go to recurrent expenditure, while N383.678 billion would take care of capital expenditure.
A further break down of the budget revealed that N211.043 billion would be spent on economic affairs, N120.508 billion on general public services, N113.379 billion on education, N64.677 on health, N62.713 on housing and community amenities, N53.043 billion on environment, N28.559 billion on public order and safety, N4.636 billion on recreation, culture and religion and N4.025 billion on social protection.
It is noteworthy that 2016 budget represents an improvement of 26 percent over the 2014 and 2015 budgets which stood at N489.6 billion individually. The increase in the budget size compared to the preceding two years, according to the governor, would enable the state government to focus on the present challenges, including security, traffic management and physical and social infrastructural development “which have thrown up new challenges quite different from what the state used to experience and have always known.”
 According to Ambode, “We plan to use the 2016 budget to strategically build new infrastructure, while we continue to maintain existing ones. Wealth and 
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