You owe Nigerians some answers, Obi tackles senate over budget padding

The lawmaker representing Bauchi Central, Senator Abdul Ningi, had during a recent interview, alleged that an additional ₦3 trillion was inserted in the 2024 budget.

He stressed that the Federal Government was operating two versions of the 2024 budget, adding that the ₦28.7 trillion budget passed and signed into law by President Bola Tinubu was skewed against the North.

The President promptly denied the allegation on Saturday, saying the alleged ₦25tn budget was never presented to the Senate.

However, during plenary on Tuesday, March 12, 2024, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) walked back his allegations and apologised to his colleagues in the red chamber.

While offering clarifications, he claimed that his interview, which was in the Hausa language, had been twisted out of context but insisted that only ₦25 trillion of the budget was tied to projects.

Meanwhile, the Senate resolved to slam a three-month suspension on Ningi over claims that his action embarrassed the integrity of the National Assembly.

In its defence, the Senate further explained that the ₦3 trillion alleged to be padded in the 2024 budget was actually statutory transfers to first-line charge agencies of government not domiciled in the ministries.

But Obi isn't satisfied with the explanations of the Senate and wants the red chamber to offer clarifications to the people regarding the matter.

In a communique posted on his X account, the Labour Party candidate asserted that it's sacrosanct for every penny of Nigeria’s public fund to be used for public good.

Read Obi's full take on the budget padding saga below;

The fuss over the alleged ₦3 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 ₦1.2trillion padded not ₦3trillion 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 ₦3.7trn 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 ₦1.2 trillion, it is still a very significant amount, when you consider that it is almost 5 times the ₦251.47 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 ₦1.2 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 ₦3.7 trillion without any detailed project allocations, I strongly urge the Senate to do more detailed work of channeling 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.