Budget padding saga: Sen. Ningi’s dangerous play
By Tiko Okoye
Senator Abdul Ningi representing Bauchi Central recently granted an interview to the BBC Hausa Service in which he made three allegations that are still reverberating in the Nigerian polity.
First, he claimed that some unnamed senators – obviously enabled by Senate President Godswill Akpabio – padded the N25 billion federal budget already passed by the whole Senate by as much as N3.7 billion.
Second, he alleged that based on the foregoing, President Bola Tinubu was implementing an illegal budget amounting to N28.7 billion.
Third, he bellowed that capital expenditures were heavily skewed towards the South where the president comes from.
These allegations are indeed very grave. Little wonder, therefore, that video clips of the interview immediately went viral on social media platforms, with the Presidency and the Senate Leadership energetically battling to force a recalcitrant genie back in the bottle. The first two allegations amount to high crimes that can culminate in the commencement of impeachment proceedings, while the third could result in the implosion of the country, if not very carefully handled.
It’s preposterous to contend, as many are doing, that Ningi was just being punished for “standing up to be the beacon of the truth (in the Senate)” and that suspending him amounted to a “violation of free speech.” One angry commentator shared this quotation by American-Russian technology specialist Edward Snowden: “When exposing a crime is treated as committing a crime, you are being ruled by criminals.”
Ningi as a super sleuth? And the others pronounced guilty by word of mouth and no longer by a court of competent jurisdiction? A comedy of errors? The great irony is that you can count on them to start singing an entirely different tune when an individual they consider to be ‘agreeable’ is at the receiving end.
But aren’t there laid-down institutional processes and procedures for a self-regulatory organisation like the Senate to address concerns like Ningi’s? The answer seems to be in the affirmative. As a matter of fact, it was reported that both Senators Ningi and Kawu Sumaila, in their capacities as Chairman and Publicity Secretary of the Northern Senators Forum (NSF) respectively, along with some members of the forum, sought audience with Akpabio to seek his take on the ‘inconsistencies’ the forensic consultant Ningi said he paid N30 million unearthed.
It was resolved at the parley that Ningi would furnish Akpabio with whatever ‘incriminating’ documents he had so he (Akpabio) could conduct his own investigation and subsequently inform the former of the next line of action. But rather than comply with the decision, Ningi dashed off to grant an interview to a foreign broadcasting network.
It was a clear attempt to pre-empt whatever reaction Akpabio would’ve made, and amounted to the equivalent of a boxer deviously hitting his opponent below the belt. But is Akpabio an opponent of Ningi? To put it in a nutshell, it beggars belief that an insider who decides to violate the rules and conventions of a legislative house is being hailed as a hero rather than being exposed as a zero.
Ningi is not a greenhorn senator but a legislator who has been in the National Assembly since 1999 – first at the House of Representatives where he chaired not less than two key committees and served as the House Majority Leader before up-scaling to the Red Chamber in 2011 where he served as Deputy Majority Leader until 2015 and is fully conversant with how the legislative process and system work.
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He’s a ranking member of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee. The draft budget laid on the table of the Senate by President Bola Tinubu was sent to his committee for evaluation, observations and recommendations. Furthermore, as NSF Chairman, he presided over caucus meetings the body conducted to discuss how best to promote the developmental interests of the region. He was physically present at all these meetings and never expressed a dissenting opinion, but was in lockstep with his colleagues at the third reading at the plenary session.
As a key member of the Joint Committee of the House and the Senate that sat to reconcile differences in the respective bills passed by both chambers, Ningi didn’t still express any misgivings. But voila! He shortly ensured that life imitated art by assuming the toga of the iconic fictional detective – Sherlock Holmes – to ‘discover’ – like Mungo Park? – that the country was operating two budgets – one supposedly passed by the National Assembly and another that was being illegally operated by Mr. President!
But then, like English novelist Samuel Butler espoused: “Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to tell a lie well.” As a member of the National Assembly since the return of civil rule in 1999 and a politician of note, Ningi has plenty sense – not just ‘some’ sense – and obviously knew how to package falsehood very well in a way to deceive the very elect.
But judgement day eventually came for Ningi when a jury of his peers in the Senate found him guilty of shouting ‘Wolf’ when and where there was none and violating Section 66 of the Senate’s rules. This was after the Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Sen. Olamilekun Adeola, had gone great lengths to remind his colleagues how first-line expenditure items are culled out when printing approved budgets that might create the impression of two pari-passu budgets only to someone harbouring a mischievous intent. Ningi was consequently suspended for three months.
Prior to toeing the path he chose, Ningi must’ve considered that his gambit was a low risk/high payoff venture. Low risk because members of the NSF and their lackeys from the South have an inbuilt superiority in terms of numbers; high payoff because it would force President Tinubu’s hand, by making him dole more project funds to the North at the expense of the South. A beleaguered Tinubu would also expectedly be too incapacitated to save Akpabio’s bacon from the fire when Ningi and his enablers execute the coup de grace that would see him being replaced by his unflappable foe, former Zamfara State Gov. Abdulaziz Yari.
The only reason why most commentators seem to be casting their lot with Sen. Ningi is that the Nigerian polity has become more polarised, and Nigerians themselves have grown more partisan, that the truth these days, as 16th Century French essayist and moralist Michel Montaigne poignantly posited, “is not that which really is, but what every man persuades another individual to believe.” I consider it incredulous that most commentators, especially from the South, are looking at the saga from the perspective of “An enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Most of them just want to see President Tinubu get his comeuppance at every twist and turn.
And although Tinubu is beginning to give even his admirers cause to doubt whether he’s really ready to make a change in governance considering mounting unforced errors that have exposed inadequate background checks for those he nominates for top public offices, Nigeria is still bigger than any one individual. How can we accept that things are okay for Nigeria as long as Tinubu keeps getting embarrassed? It’s a very immature and unproductive way of looking at things.
Can’t these commentators really decipher that Ningi was dangerously inflaming passions in a country where emotions are still very raw in the aftermath of the contentious February 25, 2023 election by brazenly attempting to pit the North against the South? Subtlety is obviously not his best quality. “A truth that’s told with bad intent,” intoned English mystic and poet William Blake, “beats all the lies you can invent.” I went in search of an uncommon word that would encapsulate what I think of Ningi; luckily I found it: Snollygoster, meaning a politician whose actions are motivated by self-interest rather than morals.
As the Senate Majority Leader, Opeyemi Bamidele, pointed out, why is it that Senate Presidents of Northern extraction usually enjoy a stable tenure while those from the South are subjected to a revolving door syndrome? For instance, the South-East produced as many as five Senate Presidents within a period of eight years under Obasanjo. Compare this tumultuous sequencing to the tenures of David Mark, Bukola Saraki and Ahmad Lawan from the North.
More than anything else, the worst part is that it’s we Southerners, who claim to be very learned and widely exposed with plenty sense, that Northerners readily depend on to destroy our very own elected public officials, only to go on griping and grumbling about how Northerners believe and act as if it’s their birthright to rule Nigeria. Who will save the South from itself?
Unfortunately, Ningi’s ruse has moved Southern senators to revive their moribund association as a countervailing force. The ugly manoeuvrings in the Red Chamber ought to make you wonder whether we are heading towards more inclusiveness and unity in Nigeria as against more exclusivity and divisions along primordial fault lines. Shouldn’t we be asking the right questions rather than just being enamoured with hurling stinging one-liners at perceived enemies?
