The presidential candidate of the Labour Party in 2023, Peter Obi, is certain that Nigerians still need an answer from the Nigerian Senate on the claims of budget padding made by a member of the lower house.
In a recent interview, Senator Abdul Ningi, the legislator from Bauchi Central, said that an extra ₦3 trillion had been added to the 2024 budget.
He emphasized that there were two budgets for 2024 being operated by the Federal Government, and he said that President Bola Tinubu’s ₦28.7 trillion budget was biased against the North.
The President swiftly refuted the accusation on Saturday, stating that the Senate was never presented with the purported ₦25 trillion budget.
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) expressed regret to his fellow members of the red chamber and withdrew his accusations.
He provided clarifications and stated that his Hausa-language interview had been taken out of context, but only ₦25 trillion of the budget was allocated to projects.
Concurrently, the Senate decided to impose a three-month suspension on Ningi due to allegations that his behavior compromised the National Assembly’s credibility.
The Senate provided additional justification for its defense, stating that the ₦3 trillion purportedly padded out of the 2024 budget was really statutory transfers to government organizations that are not housed in the ministries but rather first-line charge agency.
However, Obi wants the red chamber to provide clarifications since he is dissatisfied with the Senate’s explanations.
The Labour Party candidate declared that it is imperative that every penny of Nigeria’s public funds be used for the benefit of the people in a statement that was uploaded to his X account.
See Obi’s whole analysis on the budget padding debacle below;
The Senate’s decision to suspend the whistleblower in response to the claim that ₦3 trillion had been padded into the 2024 budget has not addressed important concerns that have arisen from the allegation, and the controversy surrounding it continues.
The Executive concurred that there was only ₦1.2 trillion padded, not ₦3 trillion as the Senator claimed, but the Senator is adamant about his assertion. New accusations regarding the Senate leadership’s haphazard and uneven distribution of constituency projects have also surfaced.
