The State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) in Jigawa State has spent about NN2,467,488,030 on capital expenditure in the first three months of the 2024 fiscal year of the state purchasing grains palliative for victims of disasters in the state.
Within this period, SEMA spent a total of about N3,576,488,030 as capital expenditure representing about 325.1 percent of budget performance. This performance figure indicates that the agency spent two times more than its approved budget.
In the 2024 1st Quarter Budget Performance Report released by the State Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning, SEMA was allocated about N1,100,000,000 with the code 016200200100 for capital expenditure in the 2024 approved budget.
In the second quarter Budget Performance Report, SEMA’s fiscal allocation was revised up to about N5,000,000,000 ostensibly to cover N2.4bn spent outside approved budget line of the agency.
However, in August this year, Jigawa SEMA acknowledged spending only about N2bn procuring and distributing food items to victims of flood and other disaster in the state.
Data obtained from Relief Web Nigeria indicates that this year, flooding affected about 20 Jigawa local government areas. It affected 257,236 people; 42,603 households and displaced 94,893 people. Also, about 39 persons lost their lives.
Similarly, about 37,282 hectares of farms were washed away by the flood, forcing more than half of the victims to lose their source of livelihoods. Most of the affected people rely on agriculture for livelihoods.
WikkiTimes puts a call through the mobile phone of the Executive Secretary of Jigawa State Emergency Management Agency, Dr Haruna Mairiga to get their reaction on the reported overspending by the agency but was not responded to. The call was made on 17th October at about 10:39am. Similarly, a text message was sent to him on 18th October at about 03:14pm but was not also replied to.