"The N124.3 billion budget, out of which N43.4 billion was set aside as recurrent expenditure and the lion share of N80.9 billion as capital votes, was passed into law by the Assembly last Thursday in a record period of less than a month of scrutiny by the Budget and Appropriation Committee."
That's how much Ondo state is expected to spend over the next 365 days as in the Guardian report here.
But its the bit here:
"THE Ondo State Appropriation Law 2010, the legal instrument for the current fiscal plan of the state government, has been posted on the Internet..."
that got my attention.
They made it appear as though the mere posting ( to use their choice of word ) such information to the Internet, is some kind of an achievement...Only in the land where Ideas are truly scarce.
But wait, more disaster. The budget cannot be found.
Nowhere!.
Having surfed http://www.ondostate.gov.ng/ for up to ten minutes, a direct link to the budget Cannot be seen.
Yet, ONe sees this:
and
this.
Why is the Governor's cake-cutting-jamboree getting home-page presence, when a basic piece of information, so critical to the the very soul of governance, heck! the people, is un-seeable?
Or at best, buried away somewhere ?
:
The managers of this government, and its website authors need to step up their games.
It is not election time, and they can learn a lot from visiting other government website such as:
this, South Africa,
- http://www.gov.za/
or this,
http://www.ghana.gov.gh/ Ghana,
or, if feeling very ambitious indeed,
this:
http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/index.htm UK.
A government's website should be about the Ideas of governmenance and policies, and one should find all the links to the right departments and latest Information on the home page.
If one wanted to see the governor's wive at cake-cutting, their wedding ceremony would probably be a better version to watch...
So much, for posting the budget onto the Internet...
::