2024 budget padded with N3trn, senator alleges

A senator has raised the alarm that a different 2024 budget that included an additional N3 trillion was “passed underground”.

According to Senator Abdul Ningi, who represents the Bauchi Central Senatorial District, there was a different 2024 budget than the one that was approved on the National Assembly floor.

Ningi revealed that a group of experts has been examining the budget and that President Bola Tinubu will soon receive a report to determine whether or not he was aware of it.

The Northern elite is dissatisfied with this government because the North has been neglected, the Senator claimed while speaking as a guest during an interview with the BBC on Saturday.

“This is true (about the government review), we hired consultants to review the budget for us for the last three months.

He said: “We have some experts that are working on it line by line. We have seen the huge damage that was done not only to the north but the entire country in that budget. We are supposed to sit with the Senate President to inform him about what we have observed.

“We want to show him what we have seen in the budget that is not acceptable, we will not accept them and we don’t want the country to continue spending money on those things.

“Apart from what the National Assembly did on the floor, there was another budget that was done underground which we didn’t know.

“The new things we have discovered in the budget were not known to us. We haven’t seen them in the budget that was debated and considered on the floor of the National Assembly.”

Ningi provided additional insight into the budgetary findings when he stated that the approved budget and the actual budget differed by N3 trillion.

“For instance, it was said that there was a budget of N28 trillion, but what was passed was N25 trillion,” the senator stated. Thus, N3 trillion is added on top.

“Where are they and how is it progressing? We must so be aware of this. There are numerous items. We are preparing a report that we will present to the president and inquire as to whether or not he is aware of it. This is the plan that we had in mind,” the senator said.

Alleging that some ongoing projects in the North have been neglected, Ningi said: “The President is going to have a meeting with us. We will discuss with him the dredging of the River Niger, Ajaokuta, and the Mambila Power Plant.

“We shall discuss the Niger Republic with him. They recently announced that they will build a dam; this is bad for us.”