Ekiti Assembly passes N7.5 billion extra budget bill

Queries Benin Disco over epileptic power supply

The Ekiti State House of Assembly has passed the revised 2016 Appropriation Bill into law.

According to a statement by the Special Assistant (Media) to the Speaker, Stephen Gbadamosi in Ado-Ekiti, it was passed after the Chairman of the House Committee on Finance and Appropriation, Samuel Abiola Jeje, submitted a report to the whole Assembly.

Jeje said “at the close of the committee’s exercise, N48,200,100,797.80 has been proposed to the House as
current expenditure for consideration” while “N22,353,061,886.81 was approved by the committee as capital expenditure.”

Speaker of the House, Pastor Kola Oluwawole, said: “The bill’s passage was accelerated because of the state government’s desire for infrastructure development. This will assist the government to meet up with the proposed projects and ongoing ones.”

He further said that the committee had redistributed wealth in accordance with the current realities and with the aim of assisting the Governor Ayo Fayose-led administration to achieve its massive infrastructural revolution goals.

In another development, while addressing the management team of the Benin Electricity Distribution Company (BEDC), some of the lawmakers queried why Ekiti people had not been getting electricity and prepaid meters for consumers who had paid for them.

The House stated that the poor service delivery had made life unbearable for the people, especially those who used electricity for daily work.

Reacting to some allegations, the Chief Transmission Officer of Ekiti and Ondo states for BEDC, Mr. Ernest Edgar, lauded the House for its proactive measure of addressing problems, noting that it was the first to pass the state electricity regulation bill into law.

He said delay and non-payment of BEDC bills was part of the reasons for poor supply of electricity in some parts of the state, whereas that the firm paid for the energy supplied by transmission companies.

“We give out what we have,” he said.

The team, therefore, enjoined the people to pay their bills promptly so that the company can improve on its services. It also promised not to bill them arbitrarily.

At the end of the meeting, some of the resolutions included making prepaid meters available free of charge to the people of Ekiti State, doing the needful to ensure stable and regular electricity supply and that government should endeavour to pay its incurred BEDC bills promptly to allow the company improve on its services.