Fashola seeks N9b to cover LASU fee review, Ebola disease outbreak

LAGOS State Governor, Babatunde Fashola (SAN) has requested the re-ordering of Year 2014 budget of the state to meet with emerging public service demands in the area of education and public health.

Fashola said the re-ordering, worth N9.960 billion, was needed to cover the shortfall of recently revised tuition fees in the state-owned university and the outbreak of deadly Ebola Virus Disease (EVD).

Fashola in a request to the Lagos Assembly described the demands as “sufficiently compelling” and could not wait for another financial year.

The governor in a letter titled: “Y2014 Budget Re-ordering of priorities”, read on the floor of the Assembly, explained that the re-ordering is to take care of issues like the recent review of Lagos State University (LASU) school fees policy.

He said the policy requires the State to make fresh provisions to cover the tuition shortfall in projected revenues to keep the institution running.

Fashola added that the unanticipated though very urgent need to address the threat of the Ebola virus epidemic among Lagosians is expensive and demands additional funding from the budget.

In addition, according to the governor, “is the need for counterpart funding request that enables us to access developmental funds to install solar power panels in 172 public schools and 11 primary health centres in the first phase.”

He said the re-ordering would not affect the original budget size of N489.69 billion as “we have discovered that there are still unutilised provisions by some MDAs, which may remain so till year end.”

“Hence, we are proposing to move such provisions to where they are more urgently needed to enable the state government address pressing needs” in the areas identified above and other areas like security, housing and so on,” Fashola said.

The re-ordering is proposed from Capital Expenditure Provisions of 10 Agencies with a total value of N9.960billion.

After a brief debate over the issue by the lawmakers, the request was committed to the House Committee on Economic Planning and Budget that was mandated to report back to the House on Thursday because of the urgency of the issues involved.

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