•Peter Obi
Presidential Candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in the 2023 election, Mr Peter Obi, is of the opinion that the Nigerian Senate still owes the people some explanations as regards the budget padding scandal rocking the Upper Chambers at the moment.
Obi said the claims and counter-claims over the alleged N3trillion which was padded into the 2024 budget, requires proper explanation as to what Nigerians must need to know regarding management of the nation’s, reports Channels TV.
The Senate under the leadership of Senate President Godswill Akpabio had on Tuesday suspended Senator Abdul Ningi over allegations of N3.7trn padding of the 2024 Budget.
Ningi, of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) from Bauchi Central Senatorial District, was suspended for three months after a long stormy session in the red chamber.
In an interview, Ningi had claimed that the federal government is operating two versions of the 2024 budget and that the N28.7 trillion Budget passed and signed into law by President Bola Tinubu was skewed against the North.
Many Senators and the presidency had pounced on Ningi, describing his claims as “far-fetched and unbecoming of a leader of his status”.
Ningi would later deny saying that the country is operating two budgets but insisted that only N25trn of the budget was tied to projects while N3.7trn had no project tied to it.
Trying to clarify the claims made by Ningi, the presidency came out to say that the National Assembly padded the budget with N1.27tn, adding that it does “not see where the N3tn is coming from.”
Addressing both the Senate and the Presidency in a communique shared via X, Mr Obi asserted that it is sacrosanct for every penny of Nigeria’s public fund to be used for public good, adding that the alleged N3 trillion is more than the national budget of the two most critical components of the human development index, health and education, combined.
He stressed that even if there is no N3trillion as claimed, then, 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.
Below is Mr Obi’s full take on the budget padding issue.
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 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.
