By Ishaya Ibrahim
Presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the 2023 election, Peter Obi, has asked the Senate to come clean on the allegation of N3.7 trillion budget padding allegation made by suspended Senator Abdu Ningi who represents Bauchi Central.
Ningi was slammed with three months suspension following a grilling debate over his comment during a BBC Hausa interview where he alleged that at least N3.7 trillion in the 2024 budget has no location in the Appropriation Act.
Obi, in a statement released on his X handle, said Ningi’s allegation of budget padding has been corroborated by the federal government and a civic tech organisation, BudgIT.
The LP chieftain said the federal government acknowledged that N1.2 trillion was indeed padded into the budget, while BudgIT said N3.7 trillion on the budget has no details.
The statement reads: “The fuss over the alleged N3 trillion padded into the 2024 budget raised by a Senator still rages as the Senate’s reaction of suspending the whistle-blower has not addressed vital issues emanating from the allegation.
“The Senator is insisting on his allegation and the Executive agreed that there was only N1.2trillion padded not N3trillion as alleged by the Senator. Fresh allegations have also cropped up over indiscriminate and unbalanced allocation of constituency projects by the Senate leadership. A civic society group, Budgit, through their official, have also added their voice to agree with the Senator. They allege that there was no detailed project allocations for about N3.7trn in the 2024 Appropriation Act.
“As the Senate suspension of the senator involved has not addressed the issue, they still owe the Nigerian public a clear clarification over the various claims and counterclaims, including that of the executive arm, to be able to know exactly what is happening, and also disclose to the public, the exact amounts allocated for constituency projects for appropriate monitoring of implementation by the public.
“I had particularly elucidated in my earlier comment on what we can use the N3 trillion to achieve, by showing that it is more than the national budget of the two most critical components of the human development index, health and education, combined.
“Now that the executive arm has accepted that the padded amount is only N1.2 trillion, it is still a very significant amount, when you consider that it is almost 5 times the N251.47 billion proposed for Universal Basic Education, which is the foundation of education, in the Country. Today in Nigeria, the greatest challenge to human resource development is education, which has been identified as most critical at the basic level.
“Nigeria has about 20 million out-of-school children today because of the poor investment in education. These are resources that would have been utilised to ensure that our children are taken off the streets and returned to schools.
“The N1.2 trillion which the executive branch admitted to have been padded, if channeled into any of the critical areas of development, could have positively impacted the nation and uplifted the people.
“And if indeed the report from Budgit is true, that there is about N3.7 trillion without any detailed project allocations, I strongly urge the Senate to do more detailed work of channelling these funds into the critical areas of development – education, health and pulling people out of poverty, which will in turn, minimise the criminality we are facing today. We must, as a matter of urgency, put a stop to all the wastage of our scarce resources, amid the excruciating hardship in the country.
“Let every penny of our public fund be used for public good. That is the only way to achieve the New Nigeria we are working towards.”