The Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, has signed the 2020 budget of the state into law after its passage by the State House of Assembly.

The deputy governor, who was the acting governor of the state, Hadiza Balarabe, had presented N257.8 billion as the 2020 proposed budget, with capital and recurrent expenditures put at N190.03 billion and N67.9 billion respectively.

While presenting the budget to the State House of Assembly on Tuesday in Kaduna, Mrs Balarabe gave a breakdown of the budget estimate according to sectoral allocations.

The acting governor said the state’s economic sub-sector, which includes agriculture, business innovation and technology, housing and urban development, public works and infrastructure, had been allocated N80.6 billion.

Mrs Balarabe said N27.9 billion was earmarked for general administration, N76.5 billion for social sector, while regional sub-sector comprising environment, natural resources and water accounted for N4.8 billion.

The acting governor emphasised that the 2020 budget estimate placed a premium on human capital development and physical infrastructure.

She reiterated the administration’s commitment to expanding access to education, saying from 2020, education in the state is free and compulsory from primary to secondary or technical/ vocational education level.

Mrs Balarabe also explained that prior to 2020, all children were provided nine-year free education with the exception of the girl-child who was granted free education to the completion of secondary education.

In a statement made available on the Kaduna State Government’s Twitter page on Monday, the House of Assembly increased the budget size to N259.25 billion, up from the N257.9 billion in the draft budget that was presented by Mrs Balarabe on 15 October 2019.

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