FACT CHECK: Dino Melaye Wrong On N56.5 Billion Allocation To Kogi Gov’s Office In 2022 Budget

Senator Dino Melaye, on November 24, accused Governor Yahaya Bello of allocating more than 40% of Kogi State’s 2022 budget to his office and the state’s government house.

In a viral social media video on Wednesday, Melaye claimed that out of the N145 billion Governor Bello submitted to the Kogi House of Assembly as the state’s proposed budget for 2022, N90 billion is for recurrent expenditure while N55 billion is for capital projects.

Out of the N90 billion recurrent expenditure, the former senator claimed that N36.5 billion was budgeted for running of the state’s Government House while N20 billion was allocated to the governor’s office, making a total of 56.5 billion allocation to the Lugard House.

The senator claimed that, “this is the first time actually that the government house would be separated from the governor’s office when the governor’s office is in the government house.

“About 40% of the budget of Kogi State is going to Yahaya Bello alone and his budget is higher than the budget that will have concomitant effect on the lives of Kogites even if implemented (that is the capital projects budget).”

He described the action as, “dubious, satanic, wicked and nefarious”

Verification of Claim

THE WHISTLER studied the draft budget estimates prepared by the Kogi State Ministry of Finance and submitted to the state assembly by Governor Bello on October 28, 2021.

Tagged ‘Budget of Accelerated Result,’ the document show that Senator Melaye exaggerated the actual allocation to the governor’s office which include the government house and the office of the deputy governor.

While Senator Melaye claimed that the government house has separate allocation of N20 billion, checks by THE WHISTLER showed that the N20,439,392,039.18 allotted to the government house in the document is part of the N36,130,419,521.60 allocated to the governor’s office.

A breakdown of the budget showed that N20,439,392,039.18 was allocated to the government house while the Deputy Governor’s Office got N1,466,296,892.44.

Allocations to other agencies under the governor’s office were given as: Emergency Management Agency, N 48,047,028.22; Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP), 331,724,584.00, Kogi State Pension Commission, 13,791,306,754.76; and the Bureau of Public Private Partnership, 53,652,223.00.

Therefore, Senator Melaye’s claim of N56.5 billion allocation to the Kogi governor’s office is false.

However, the proposed budget showed that the Governor Bello government plans to spend more than double of what Kogi State generated as IGR in 2020 on government house personal and routine expenses such as travel allowances and internet broadband in the Lugard House.

The Acting Executive Chairman of Kogi State Internal Revenue Service (KGIERS), Yusufu Abubakar, had announced in July that the state recorded Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) of N17.5 billion for the year 2020.

The proposed budget also shows a wide gap between the budget allocation to the governor’s office (N36.1 billion), the state legislature (N3,681,387,507.61) and the judiciary (N4,720,893,239.20).