2024 Kaduna Budget: Fulfilling The Rural Transformation Covenant

By Nasir Dambatta

The devotion of the 2024 Kaduna State budget to the rural communities by the State Governor, Senator Uba Sani, has elated everyone genuinely concerned with the ideal good governance required of a just and fair leader guided by foresight and strategic plans for sustainable prosperity.

The N458.2 billion budget, tagged: Budget of Rural Transformation for Inclusive Development, is an unprecedented masterpiece with regard to the gladdening promises esconced in its tag.

What should be strikingly elating about the budget is that it, for the first time in the recent history of Kaduna State, expresses concrete determination to orchestrate equitable justice and fairness in the distribution of resources and development across the state.

Senator Uba Sani struck this covenant with the rural communities during his electioneering campaigns.

The fact that it minces no words in glaringly expressing its focus on ‘Rural Transformation for Inclusive Development’ deeply underscores the Uba Sani administration’s determination to decisively address the decades-old lopsidedness in development projects and programmes between the rural and urban communities of the state.

Such protracted lopsidedness seem to have condemned majority of the state’s rural communities to perpetual backwardness.

A cursory look at the state’s physical and economic landscape, as is the case in most of the states of the federation, show that development projects and programmes have unfortunately, and nauseatingly, been skewed in favour of the urban communities for decades.

This seeming injustice and unfairness committed to the Kaduna rural communities for decades have promoted exclusivity among the people and perpetuated the elusiveness of the state’s rapid development and economic prosperity, considering the incontrovertible fact that the larger bulk of economic production takes place in the rural communities.

Let’s not even talk of the fact that majority of the votes cast in elections gravitate from the rural communities. Most urban dwellers are mere merry-go-rounders.

Hurray! The 2024 Kaduna State budget may mark the most-significant and strategic turning point where every component part of the state will savour the satisfaction of being recognized and equitably carried along not only in terms of the distribution of democratic deliverables but also in the broad gamut of just and fair governance.

‘Rural Transformation for Inclusive Development’ naturally implies that the impementation of development programmes and execution of development projects under all sectoral allocations will, in 2024, significantly and equitably favour the rural communities, in a grand move to produce a beautiful blend and showpiece of equitable development among the states of the federation.

While presenting the budget last Monday, Sani said it is aimed at inclusive development through the provision of critical infrastructure, especially in rural communities as well as delivering on social protection and human capital development.

He expressed his government’s unrelenting posture in fashioning and implementing policies, programmes and projects to bring succour to the poor and the vulnerable, majority of whom dwell in the rural areas.

“We are prioritizing women and youth empowerment. Our administration places high premium on human capital development. Consequently, education and health sectors are receiving priority attention,” the governor said.

“We are determined to revitalize the agricultural sector in order to create jobs for our teeming youth population and ensure food security in our state.

“To ensure a safe environment for farming and business activities, we have made safety and security our topmost priority,” he announced.

It behoves on the Kaduna rural communities to, therefore help and support Governor Uba Sani to fulfill their decades-old yearnings for transformation and inclusiveness.

Dambatta is Senior Special Assistant on Print Media to the Governor