The Labour Party (LP) Presidential candidate in the 2023 election, Peter Obi, has admonished the Senate to come clean and clear all the allegations associated with the N3.7trillion padding in the 2024 budget.
Senator Abdul Ningi, the Senator representing Bauchi Central Senatorial District, was handed a three-month suspension on Tuesday after he alleged that N3.7 trillion was not being traceable in the 2024 budget.
Meanwhile, a civic organisation focused on the Nigerian budget and public data, BudgIT, has thrown its weight behind suspended Senator Abdul Ningi on the N3.7 trillion gap in the 2024 budget presented to the National Assembly.
The Director and co-founder of BudgIT, Seun Onigbinde, said in an interview with Channels Television on Wednesday that Ningi was right if he posited that there was no detailed allocation for N3.7 trillion in the 2024 budget and allegations that two versions of the 2024 budget were passed at the National Assembly.
Obi, writing in his X handle on Wednesday, told the upper chamber that the public deserves to know the truth about the allegations especially as the Senate and the Executive are having discordant tunes on the matter and fresh allegations cropping up on the sharing of constituency funds in the budget.
According to the former Anambra State Governor: “The fuss over the alleged N3 trillion padded into the 2024 budget raised by a Senator still rages as the Senate 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 Senate.
“Fresh allegations have also cropped up over indiscriminate and unbalanced allocation of constituency projects by the Senate leadership.
“A civic 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 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 as the executives claimed to have been padded, if channelchannelledny of the critical areas of development, could have positively impacted the nation and uplifted the people.
“And if indeed the report from the Budget 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 channelling 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.”