Kaduna Assembly to prioritize programme based budgeting in 2026 fiscal year

By Bashir Bello

KANO – The Kaduna State House of Assembly has said it will prioritise programme-based budgeting in the 2026 fiscal year budget in order to meet the needs and priorities of the citizens.

The Chairman, House Committee on Appropriation and Implementation, Engr. Shehu Yunusa stated this during a training organised by the United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF for the committee members in Kano.

Yunusa who represents Kubau Constituency, said the 2026 fiscal year budget will be much better than the previous years as it will have a direct impact on the needs of people of the state.

He described the training as timely and educative, noting that it will go a long way to equip the lawmakers to have an instrument to guide them to prepare a budget which is people centered.

According to him, “Let me commend the organizers of this workshop because it is timely and educative, we learn so many things that we will put into use when we go back to the House in handling the budget preparation and the approval of the budget.

“And it will contribute a lot to the success of the budget, and I know it will serve as an instrument that will guide us, that will even guide us to meet up the demands of putting the budgets together.

“So the assembly will give a better budget this year because at least we’ve learned a lot and we are going to make use of all what we learned to make sure that we have a program-based budget and the budget will serve the people of Kaduna State,” the lawmaker said.

Similarly, the Chairman, House Committee on Budget and Planning who doubles as Member representing Kachia Constituency, Peter Agite expressed optimistic that the 2026 budget will witness improvement in terms of programme based budgeting.

Agite said the training has broaden the understanding of the lawmakers to know areas they can allocate resources to better the lives of their constituents.

On her part, the UNICEF Social Policy Officer in Kaduna Field Office, Wakidara Akila emphasized the importance of programme based budgeting in order to bring about development.

“We have realized that generally in Nigeria as a whole, we need to build on our budget to be more focused on development and the only way we can do that is to make it a programme based budget so as to focus on activities that will inform development. Kaduna State is one of six states where UNICEF is embarking on this project.

“We are looking at four key sector areas of Education, Health, Social Protection and Water and Sanitation because they are key area and are very important to children. UNICEF being a child focused organization, this we see is one of the strategies which we can focus on child development”.

She however, said the training was to equipped the lawmakers to understand how to review and scrutinize the budget when it is brought to the house to ensure that the budget is tied to activities that will impact on the lives of people of the state.

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