The Nigerian Senate has suspended Senator Abdul Ningi, who represents Bauchi Central, over allegations of a 3 trillion budget padding made against the Red Chamber.
The Senate suspended him for three months after debating the matter on Tuesday, March 12.
A member of the Appropriation Committee in the Senate, Jimoh Ibrahim, initially moved the motion for Ningi’s suspension for 12 months due to allegations of criminal misinformation and breach of peace in the National Assembly and the country.
Other lawmakers, like Senator Asuquo Ekpenyong from Cross River South Senatorial District, proposed an amendment to Ibrahim’s motion.
Ekpenyong and Senator Abdulfatai Buhari from Oyo North suggested reducing the suspension to six and three months, respectively.
Senate President Godswill Akpabio described Ningi’s offense as “grievous.” Most of the senators supported Ningi’s suspension for three months through a voice vote.
Meanwhile, the Senate stated that there was no budget padding in the N28.77 trillion budget passed by the joint chambers of the National Assembly.
Senator Yemi Adaramodu, speaking on behalf of the Senate, reacted to the allegation of budget padding amounting to over N3 trillion ($1.8 billion) brought by a serving senator.
Senator Abdul Ningi, the chairman of the Northern Senators Forum and representing Bauchi Central Senatorial District, raised concerns about the 2024 budget during an interview with the BBC.
He alleged that the federal government was operating with a N28 trillion budget, different from the N25 trillion budget passed by the National Assembly.
Ningi stated that in the last three months, they had employed private financial auditors to scrutinize the 2024 budget and had “uncovered significant unauthorized changes and additions to the budget that would have widespread negative impacts on the country.”
“Besides what was passed on the floor of the National Assembly, there is another budget being implemented underground that we are not aware of,” he added.
Ningi questioned if there was a budget of N28 trillion while only passing a budget of N25 trillion, indicating an additional N3 trillion. Where is it coming from and where is it going? This is something the public needs to know.
“There is no budget padding as far as the Senate and the National Assembly are concerned,” Senator Adaramodu, a spokesperson for the Senate, stated.
He explained that the National budget is a public document that outlines the expected revenue and expenditure of the country.
This prompted the presidency to clarify that the National Assembly added N1.27 trillion to the 2024 budget, and they did not see where the additional N3 trillion came from.
“What we know is that the National Assembly approved a budget of N28 trillion, which the President signed, as approved by both houses of the National Assembly,” presidential spokesperson Bayo Onanuga stated in a statement on Sunday.
President Bola Tinubu presented a budget of N27.5 trillion for the 2024 fiscal year to a joint session of the National Assembly in November 2023.
However, as the budget was passed on December 30, lawmakers increased it by N1.2 trillion, bringing the total to N28.7 trillion.
This was after they increased allocations to some Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) of the federal government, which they claimed had received inadequate funding.
Some key elements of the budget as approved by the lawmakers are:
- Aggregate Expenditure: N28,777,404,073,861
- Statutory Transfers: N1,742,786,788,150
- Recurrent Expenditure: N8,768,513,380,852
- Capital Expenditure: N9,995,143,298,028
- GDP Growth Rate: 3.88%
President Tinubu signed the budget into law on January 1.
Senator Abdul Ningi’s case isn’t the first
In 2016, allegations of budget padding by the National Assembly emerged as a major scandal, resulting in the suspension of the Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Appropriation, Abdulmumin Jibrin, from office on July 20, 2016.
Jibrin alleged that the then Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, and three other officials abused their office by diverting N40 billion out of the N100 billion allocated for constituency projects and appropriating it for themselves.
In the same year, it was discovered that legislators fraudulently added projects worth N480 billion to the budget during the defense sessions.
This issue arose when the then Minister of Health, Isaac Adewole, disowned the budget presented to his ministry, stating that it was not what they had submitted and emphasized that they did not want any foreign interference in the budget.
Similarly, in 2019, former President Muhammadu Buhari accused the National Assembly of increasing the budget by N90 billion from N8.83 trillion to N8.92 trillion.
Again, in 2020, former President Buhari raised concerns about projects inserted into the budget by the National Assembly, as they increased the budget by about N264 billion.
In 2021, it was reported that the National Assembly padded the budget with over N500 billion. Buhari had proposed a budget of N12.08 trillion, but during scrutiny, lawmakers increased it to N13.6 trillion.
In 2022, Buhari observed that the National Assembly added N37.59 billion for their own projects.
Similarly, in 2023, Buhari observed that lawmakers added new projects worth about N770.72 billion to the budget, while also increasing the estimates of Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) by about N58.55 billion.
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