Kaduna State government’s reduction of the budget for education and health has been frowned on at a town hall meeting sponsored by the Development Research and Project Centre (DRPC).

The state developed a draft Budget of Continuous Growth and Development to the tune of N291,932,185,576.34, with N126,833,534,781.40 recurrent and N165,098,650,794.94 capital estimates.

Education and health were given about 40 per cent of the budget. The Project Director of Giwak’s PACFah@scale Budget, Aminu Banbangida, noted that the budget on health was reduced, compared to previous years.

He, however, noted that the event was organised to call the state government’s attention to the cut in budget, which will be rectified subsequently by the state’s ministry of budget.

Babangida said: “We are into advocacy on key issues like family planning and child killer deceases. We realised there was no cash backing this programme supported by DRPC PACFah@scale Budget.”

GOVERNOR Nasir el-Rufai, in a message to the participants at the town hall meeting, said his administration would complete all ongoing projects before leaving office next year.

He said: “As a responsive government, we recognised early the need to engage citizens in every step of the governance process, and deliberately institutionalised town hall meetings as an avenue for citizens and government to engage, exchange ideas, co-create and obtain feedback.

“These roundtable approaches to governance have ensured that projects and policies of our government remain people-centred, especially in the spirit of Open Government Partnership, which was pioneered by Kaduna in Nigeria.”