Heads of Agencies Gathered in Abuja for State House Retreat on 2025 Budget Preparation
Abuja, EPICSTORIAN – In preparation for the 2025 budget ahead of the upcoming fiscal year, the State House has hosted a retreat for heads of agencies under its supervision before the issuance of the call circular for the exercise.
The one-day retreat, which took place on Saturday August 17, 2024, aimed to facilitate collaboration and coordination among the various government agencies to ensure a cohesive and effective budget plan.
Announcing the commencement of the 2025 budget preparation retreat , Vice President Kashim Shettima, represented by Deputy Chief of Staff, Senator Ibrahim Hadeija, urged the Heads of Agencies to be guided by the extant provisions that establish their organisations.
During the retreat, Vice President Kashim Shettima, represented by Deputy Chief of Staff, Senator Ibrahim Hadeija, directed agency heads to be guided by established ‘provisions of their organisations’.
He advised them to the follow “set objectives initiated by the State House management, leveraging on e-governance strategy to enhance operations”.
The Vice President praised the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Hon. Lateef Fagbemi, for his participation in the retreat and his informative presentation titled: “Delineation of roles and functions between the management and the agency and its supervising entity: A prerequisite for good relationship and effective delivery of Mandate. ”
The retreat , according to the vice president Kasim Shettima, will enable top officials from different agencies within the State House seek to foster a spirit of cooperation and teamwork in order to deliver the best possible outcomes for the country and the citizens at large.
Speaking on the essence of the retreat in preparation for the 2025 budget Hadeija, on behalf of the vice president, said: “This a very important retreat to remind senior civil servants, new appointees and Heads of Agencies about the Civil Service regulations.
“These regulations can be quite tedious, and the Permanent Secretary, State House, was right when he said some of these issues will come back to his table.
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“I remember when I was in the Senate Public Accounts Committee, I have seen some faces here that we summoned to come and answer questions that arose from the Auditor-General’s report .
“This underscores the importance of reminding ourselves of the procedural issues that have to complied with in governance and administration.”
The Permanent Secretary, Olufunsho Adebiyi, in his view, enlightened that the retreat was held to help facilitate collective responsibility of all involved government agencies within the State House management and under its supervision’.
”In order for us to drive the Renewed Hope Agenda of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu it has become necessary for us to synergize within the State House and all the agencies under its control,” Adebiyi stated.
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”The retreat is structured to define who is responsible for what, how we can help each other achieve our mandates, and some of us are meeting each other for the first time.
”It is necessary to define our roles and limits and avoid breaking financial, procurement, administrative thresholds.’’
Other issues discussed at the 2025 budget preparation retreat:
Furthermore, the Permanent Secretary clarified that given president Tinubu’s consent to payment of N70,000 new minimum wage — no massive recruitments of job applicants into federal agencies will be tolerated any longer by the federal government except there is clear waiver or approval, adding that the federal government now has defined rules for promotions.
“We now have new public service rules that defines when to promote, who is due for promotion, mode of promotion, procedure and conduct of promotion examinations and strict adherence to public service rules,” Adebiyi explained.
“The Retreat apprised CEOs of government agencies on types of appointments into the public service, criteria and qualifications for these appointments, procedures for procurement process, budget preparation, and the monitoring and evaluation of government policies ,” he added.
Important agencies, according to the State House Media report, placed under the supervision of the State House to guide their establishment Acts include the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), Bureau for Public Procurement (BPP), Nigeria Agriculture and Land Development Agency (NALDA), Office of the Chief Economic Adviser to the President (OCEAP) and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
Others are Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU), Nigerian Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), National Hajj Commission of Nigeria (NAHCON), National Centre for the Coordination of Early Warning and Response Mechanism, National Council on Climate Change (NATCCC), National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI) and the National Atomic Energy Commission (NAEC).
The discussions were strategically focused on identifying key areas of vital focus, streamlining operations, and maximizing resources to achieve the government’s goals and objectives for the upcoming year.
With the new designed rules laid out at the retreat, federal agency heads within the State House are expected to be able to develop a synergistic ,comprehensive, and well-coordinated budget plan that will effectively address the needs of the nation, prioritising key issues ahead of Nigeria’s 2025 budget preparation.
