Trouble is brewing in the Senate after the Northern Senators Forum yesterday accused Senate President Godswill Akpabio and his associates of padding the 2024 budget to the tune of N3 trillion.
The forum said it would take the matter to President Bola Tinubu.
But the Senate leadership dismissed the allegation as false. The chairman of the Northern Senators Forum, Abdul Ningi (PDP – Bauchi Central) said on BBC Hausa Service that the alleged padding was discovered by consultants commissioned by the forum to scrutinise the budget. He also said the Forum would soon confront Akpabio with its findings.
“In the last three months, we have engaged consultants to review the budget for us. We have some experts that are working on it line by line,” Ningi said.
“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.”
He said: “For example, it was said that there was a budget of N28 trillion but what was passed was N25 trillion.
“So there is N3 trillion on top. Where is it, where is it going? So, we need to know this. There are a lot of things.
“We are coming up with a report and we will show the President himself and ask him if he is aware or not.”
He wondered why some projects earmarked for the north, like the Ajaokuta project, the Mambila power project, the dredging of River Niger and others have not materialised after many years.
He said: “What mostly disturbs my sleep is that we had budgets in 2013 and 2014 in which we earmarked billions of naira, but they were neglected by President Goodluck Jonathan.