The Governor of Imo State, Senator Hope Uzodimma, is facing criticism from the civil society organization, Policy Alert, for allegedly prioritizing his office over key sectors in the state’s social sector budget implementation during the third quarter of 2023.<\/p>\n
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Policy Alert’s Programme Officer, Fiscal Reforms and Anti-Corruption, Faith Paulinus, expressed concern in a statement, highlighting that the Office of the Governor received a total expenditure of N11.84bn, surpassing the combined capital release of N7.37bn for all Ministries, Departments, and Agencies in the state. This discrepancy raises questions about the allocation of funds.<\/p>\n
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The organization conducted a review of the Imo State Third Quarter Budget Performance Report 2023 (July – September) and pointed out that the Office of the Governor had received N31.5bn in the last three quarters, constituting 95 percent of the N33.1bn budgeted for the entire fiscal year. Policy Alert cautioned against potential extra-budgetary expenses for the governor’s office if the spending trend persists in the last quarter.<\/p>\n
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While acknowledging the legitimacy of expenditures for the governor’s office if budgeted, the organization expressed concern about the total neglect of social sectors, including Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH), Education, Health, Youth and Social Development, Women\u2019s Affairs, Vulnerable Groups, Agriculture, and food security. Notably, these sectors received zero capital release during the quarter.<\/p>\n
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Policy Alert urged the Imo State government to redirect its focus to the social sector in the remaining quarter of 2023, emphasizing that neglecting these critical areas adversely affects citizens’ access to essential services. The organization also highlighted the imbalance between recurrent and capital spending, urging the government to reconsider its priorities and avoid prioritizing recurrent expenditure over capital expenditure.<\/p>\n
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The Governor of Imo State, Senator Hope Uzodimma, is facing criticism from the civil society organization, Policy Alert, for allegedly prioritizing his office over key sectors in the state’s social sector budget implementation during the third quarter of 2023. Policy Alert’s Programme Officer, Fiscal Reforms and Anti-Corruption, Faith Paulinus, expressed concern in a statement, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":12042,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12041"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12050,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12041\/revisions\/12050"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}