A review of the budget proposed by President Tinubu and the one eventually passed by the National Assembly show that the allegations of budget padding by Abdul Ningi are largely true.
, that over N53 billion worth of projects in the 2024 Appropriations Act are without a specific location, is true, a check by PREMIUM TIMES has revealed.
According to Mr Ningi's document, the consultants traced 36 projects that are worth N53 billion though the projects have no specific locations they are to be sited.On 29 November 2023, President Bola Tinubu presented the N27.5 trillion budget to the joint session of the National Assembly. Mr Ningi also had an interview with BBC Hausa, during which he was quoted as saying,"Apparently, we discovered N3 trillion was inserted into the budgets for projects without locations. This is the highest budget padding that happened in Nigerian history under Senator Akpabio's watch."He, however, refused to be pressured to recant his claims by his colleagues during Tuesday's plenary session.
For instance, N500 million was allocated for the"construction of solar street lights in selected cooperators settlement". Like other projects, it has no specific location and it was not contained in the proposed budget submitted by the president. Many of the projects are to be executed in different senatorial districts. However, some have very vague descriptions.
In the budget of the National Centre for Agriculture Mechanisation, over N36 billion was inserted in the budget of the agency by the lawmakers. When President Tinubu presented the budget in November 2023, the agency had about N1.8 billion as total estimated expenditure. However, by the time the lawmakers dumped their projects in there, the allocation increased to N38.6 billion.
As a minority leader in the House in 2013, Femi Gbajabiamila argued in favour of the lawmakers having the constitutional power to do so. Ordinarily, Nigerian lawmakers are entitled to a statutory fund called the Zonal Intervention Projects , also called constituency projects. The ZIP is a N100 billion fund allocated annually under which lawmakers can allocate funds to nominate projects in their constituency.
In the case of the House, the Speaker, Deputy Speaker, Majority Leader, Deputy Majority Leader, Whip, Deputy Whip, Minority Leader, Deputy Minority Leader, Minority Whip and the Deputy Minority Whip are to share N6 billion, hence, they get more as ZIPs. In the 8th Assembly, the then leadership of the National Assembly and former President Muhammadu Buhari had a strained relationship over the power of the lawmakers to include projects in the budget.
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