Senate has approved a N140bn budget for the North-Central Development Commission ,NCDC, for its 2026 operations.
While approving the budget, the Senate Committee on NCDC, on Monday, listed priority areas for the Commission in the utilisation of the budget sum.
The chairman of the committee, Senator Titus Zam, urged the management of the commission to focus on agriculture, security, health, education and infrastructure in line with the needs of the people.
Zam spoke after a closed session with the management of the NCDC, where its 2026 budget proposal was approved.
Zam said, “We have considered all the items on the estimates and found them very relevant and useful for the North-Central region.
“As a committee overseeing this commission, we have requested them to prioritise their expenditures in line with their mandate so that the people of the North-Central region will benefit from their services and have value for resources that are allocated to them”.
The chairman stressed the need for the NCDC management to have a workable plan that would address the immediate and long term needs of the people of the zone.
“You know that the North Central is mostly agricultural, and so agriculture must take a pride of place and it has been so embedded in their budget.
“They are also thinking about working with security experts and other stakeholders in the North-Central region to see to it that they support security agencies to deliver on their mandate”, Zam added.
The Senate committee chairman expressed dissatisfaction with the low implementation of the capital component of the Commission’s 2025 budget.
He, however, noted that the poor budget implementation was not peculiar to the NCDC, saying that virtually all MDAs and government establishments experienced the same challenges.
