Education gets highest allocation as Jigawa governor presents 2025 budget

The Governor of Jigawa State, Umar Namadi, has presented a budget proposal of N698.3 billion for the 2025 fiscal year before the state’s House of Assembly.

The governor presented the proposal on Friday at the assembly complex in Dutse, the state capital.

Tagging it the ‘Budget of Innovation and Transformation for Greater Jigawa’, the governor said it aims at addressing needs in critical areas such as education infrastructure, healthcare, and economic empowerment.

In a further explanation of the proposal, the state’s Commissioner of Budget and Economic Planning, Babangida Umar, said the 2025 budget proposal is about 82 per cent higher than the total appropriation in the 2024 fiscal year, which was N383.55 billion.

Mr Umar said the 2025 budget aims to sustain progress in the state.

The budget has a total recurrent expenditure of N149.75 billion, representing over 21.4 per cent of the proposed estimate, while almost 77 per cent or N536.75 billion is earmarked for capital projects and programmes.

“The balance of N11.8 billion representing about 1.7 percent of the budget is set aside for contingency and stabilisation funds and public debt charges.

“The total recurrent expenditure is only about 21 percent of the budget, compared to 2024, this represents an increase of almost 40 per cent largely due to the approved new N70,000 minimum wage used in the computation of salaries and allowances in the 2025 proposed budget,” Mr Umar said.

Personnel cost is over N90.76 billion, overhead and recurring expenditure N63.69 billion while capital investment programmes got N534.76 billion, Mr Umar stated.

Regarding sectoral allocations, education got the highest provision with an overall allocation of over N184 billion, representing N26.4 per cent of the budget.

The official said the emphasis given to the education sector is to ensure sustained provisions of qualitative and functional education at all levels, better learning outcomes, and addressing the explosive out of school children through improved access.

On agriculture, Mr Umar said over N136 billion was allocated to the sector to sustain the implementation of ongoing projects and programmes.

Health and Human Development Services got almost N40.1 billion, critical infrastructure got got over N39.4 billion while Commerce, Investments, Empowerment and Employment got N20.5 billion, among others.