The story gets more interesting as a report from Premium Times, who recently conducted a review comparing President Tinubu’s proposed budget with the version eventually passed by the National Assembly. This examination shed light on the allegations of budget padding initially raised by Senator Abdul Ningi, uncovering some troubling discrepancies.
Background:
A few weeks ago, Senator Abdul Ningi accused the Senate of padding the 2024 budget. He was later suspended for his allegation. The Senate leadership denied the padding, stating that Ningi had no evidence and that the inclusion of constituency projects was a constitutional right of lawmakers.
However, a recent report by Premium Times revealed that a review of the budget passed by the House showed a number of projects added to the proposed budget submitted by the president. These projects lacked specific locations.
Instances of Projects Without Location:
Premium Times identified numerous projects with vague descriptions and unspecified locations. For instance, a budget allocation of N500 million for “Energy Poverty Intervention in Selected Rural Cooperators Settlements” lacked precise details regarding its location within the Federal College of Land Resources in Owerri, Imo State.
Similarly, the “construction of solar street lights in selected cooperators settlement,” inserted in the budget suffered from similar ambiguity.
Agricultural Council of Nigeria, also has a vague project domiciled in the budget worth N40 million tagged, “supply of farm inputs and farm implements in selected communities.” with no specific location was put in place for the project.
Furthermore, Premium Times flagged instances where multiple projects worth billions of Naira were inserted into various agencies’ budgets without clear locations or justifications. For instance, the Nigeria Institute of Oceanography and Marine Research and the National Centre for Agriculture Mechanisation received significant budget increases without adequate project details.
The National Horticulture Research Institute, Ibadan, also had a N2 billion worth of projects with no specific locations identified. These same projects were also included in the budget of the Nigerian Institute of Oceanography and Marine Research.
The investigation revealed a pattern of potential fraud, with projects duplicated across agencies without specific locations. This suggests an alarming intent to manipulate budget allocations for undisclosed purposes. Many of these projects were not part of the original budget proposal submitted by President Tinubu, raising questions about transparency and accountability.
The investigation by Premium Times found that Senator Ningi’s allegations were largely accurate.
Premium Times in their report also stated that the lawmaker only scratched the surface, as a deeper search showed that many more projects were dumped by the lawmakers to the budget without specifying their locations. In some cases, the same projects were even included in multiple agencies’ budgets.
