The Governor of Jigawa State Alhaji Muhammad Badaru Abubakar has emerged the winner of the Business Day Transparency and Good Governance Award for the Year 2018.
The award was presented to the Governor at a colourful ceremony held at the Transcorp Hilton Abuja that was attended by fellow Governors and traditional rulers across the country.
This was made known to the press Special Assistant to the Executive Governor of Jigawa State on New Media Auwalu D Sankara via his Facebook page. He said the award was received by the state Deputy Governor Barr Ibrahim Hassan Hadejia on behalf of the Governor.
He said the awards were given based on data compiled by the Business day Research and Intelligence Unit and is based on independent statistical and fact based data gathering and analysis.
He said Governor Badaru was selected due to his notable achievements which includes the highest budgetary allocation to education in the country at 22% and the 6th highest allocation to health at 6.6%. Jigawa also achieved the 3rd highest increase in IGR at 88%.
The state has one of the lowest debt profiles despite budget performance averaging 87%, and only increased its debt profile by 2% between 2016 and 2017, with the 3rd lowest debt servicing ratio at 1.92%.
Also part of Governor Badaru’s achievements was the prompt payment of salaries and retirement benefits, recently a total of 429 retirees and deceased from the state, local government and education authorities have received the sum of over N724 million from the state government as payment for retirement benefits, death benefist, death pension balance and refund of eight percent contribution.
Commenting on Governor Badaru’s achievements the executive governor of Gombe state Ibrahim Hassan DanKwambo stated that Jigawa State is the only Northern State apart from Gombe that paid June salaries despite the FAAC deadlock.
