Professor Ben Ayade, the governor of Cross River State, South-South, Nigeria on Thursday presented the 2018 Appropriation Bill of N1.3trillion to the State House of Assembly.
The budget represents the largest presented by any state ever in Nigeria’s history.
The proposed budget, christened “Budget of Kinetic Crystallisation,” is tailored to fit the dreams and aspirations of the people of the state, the governor informed members of the State House of Assembly.
Ayade informed the lawmakers that the choice of a deficit budget rather than an envelope one was to allow for flexibility.
He said this comes as the state government moves to actualise most of the deep visionary projects of his administration such as the Bakassi Deep Seaport and the 274km superhighway among others.
The governor said, “As I come before you to present the 2018 budget, you must think deep because if I did not have that vision to think deep, we will still be dealing with issues of security, refuse, salaries and pensions; indeed we will be dealing with the very essence of survival.
“One of our biggest ambitions is to develop a deep seaport with an evacuation corridor. We have made an ample provision of about N82billion to deal with the issues of dredging, preliminary reclamation, and preconstruction in 2018.”
According to Ayade, such provisions would send a positive message to investors who are aware that by the budgetary provisions, “they can warehouse their investments because sometimes people give funding either by way of capital or by direct project implementation.”