Kaduna State will host the 2020 edition of the annual Conference of Auditors-General for Local Governments and Area Councils at Hotel Seventeen in Kaduna on Monday.
A statement issued by the secretariat states that the Auditor-General of the Federation, Mr Anthony Ayine will be the Special Guest of Honour at the four-day conference.
The Deputy Governor, Dr Hadiza Balarabe and the Speaker of Kaduna State House of Assembly, Hon Yusuf Ibrahim Zailani will be Guests of Honour at the conference whose theme is, ‘’Attaining Fiscal Transparency, Accountability and Sustainability Through Better Audit Process’’.
The statement quoted Alhaji Atiku Musa, the Auditor-General for Local Governments in Kaduna state as saying that Kaduna state was chosen to host the conference because of its successes in in Key Performance Indicators in governance.
According to him, ‘’Governor Nasir El Rufai is very passionate about transparency and accountability, that is why Kaduna state was rated the best state in Nigeria, by the World Bank States Fiscal Transparency, Accountability, and Sustainability(SIFTAS).’’
‘’Apart from this, Kaduna state was rated by the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission (NIPC) as the first sub-national to attract the highest Direct Foreign Investment in the last six months, last June, because of our Open Government Policy.
‘’Coupled with that, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) ranked Kaduna state as the 6th in Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) in the country and the first in the north, beside Abuja, in 2019,’’ he said.
The Auditor General of Local Governments in Kaduna state also said that Kaduna state is ranked number one in the Ease of Doing Business by the World Bank last year.
According to him, Kaduna state has always been at the top of almost all ratings by local and international organisations and all this ‘’has been made possible by our able governor, Malam Nasir El Rufai.’’
The Auditor General said that the last conference was held at Abuja and when it was time to nominate where the next conference will hold, almost every delegate said that they have been reading and hearing about the giant strides of the El Rufai administration, so it was decided that Kaduna should host this year’s conference.
Alhaji Atiku said that all the Auditors General for Local Governments in the 36 states of the federation, including the Federal Capital Territory(FCT), will converged in Kaduna to ‘’see things for themselves.’’
He described the governor as a very dynamic Chief Executive who is worth working with, adding that Kaduna state has benefitted from his experiences in both private and public sectors.