The federal legislature last week literally strode into a familiar turf. Members of the upper chamber, the Senate, got steamed up about another budget padding storm. The fire was as usual ignited from within.
The red chamber last Tuesday held a tempestuous session over the allegation of budget padding levelled against the behemoth by one of their own. And the hoopla is still reverberating across the country.
A ranking senator, Abdul Ningi (Adamawa Central Senatorial District), who until the N3.7trillion imbroglio was the Chairman of the Northern Senators Forum (NSF), had penultimate Monday stirred the hornets’ nest when he granted BBC, Hausa Service, an interview, alleging that a whopping sum of N3.7trn in the 2024 budget could not be traced to specific project locations.
“For the first time in Nigerian history,” Ningi told BBC, “today we are operating two different budgets. One budget was approved by the National Assembly and signed by President Bola Tinubu and one was(being)implemented by the presidency.
“The one approved by us is N25 trillion, while the one operated by the Federal Government is N28 trillion. Apparently, we discovered that N3 trillion was inserted into the budget for projects without locations. This is the highest budget padding that happened in Nigerian history under Senator Akpabio’s watch.”
Bedlam! The N3.7trillion padding allegation momentarily incensed other senators, who were already literally baying for blood ahead of the stormy session they eventually held last Tuesday, about a week after the BBC interview.
At the sitting, which was wholly devoted to the Ningi matter, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriation, Senator Olamilekan Adeola (Ogun West Senatorial District), brought a motion of breach of privilege against Ningi, who himself is a member of Appropriation Committee, and called for immediate action to address Ningi’s N3.7trillion padding allegation to protect the integrity of the budgeting process and that of the National Assembly as an arm of government.
Adeola presented a full transcription of the English version of Ningi’s interview to the Senate along with the voice recording, which was played to the hearing of all the senators.
He recalled how the N28.7trillion budget was passed and signed by the president, contending that unknown to Ningi, the alleged N3.7trillion whose project locations could not be established were captured in the first line charge to such agencies whose budgets and their details were not captured in the N25 trillion of the N28.7trillion because they are statutory agencies and their funds are in the first line charge.
He listed such agencies as the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), National Assembly, Judiciary, Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), North East Development Commission (NEDC), Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), among others.
The motion was hotly debated by the senators, who were seething with rage over Ningi’s allegation, which they considered presumptuous and scandalous. At the end, the embattled senator was slammed with a three-month suspension having refused bluntly to apologize to his colleagues as requested.
He afterwards waxed defiant and stood by his claims . And he was roundly pilloried for it. First, the Northern Senators Forum (NSF), which he had led for eight years until the N3.7trillion saga, took serious umbrage at his allegation and conduct. Seven senators signed a strongly-worded statement on behalf of the 19 northern senators under the banner of NSF and gave their chairman a scathing reprimand, contending that the claims he made on the BBC, Hausa Service, on the 2024 budget were “his personal opinion, sentiment, unfortunately skewed and incorrect…”
They declared: “That to the best of our knowledge, there was no budget padding, whatsoever, that was done to the 2024 budget. Hence, we strongly and collectively dissociate ourselves from his action, which was grossly unparliamentary.”
They said they were solidly behind President Tinubu and “would continue to support him to succeed in addressing the challenges facing our country…”
Second,the presidency also chided Ningi, who immediately after his suspension, resigned his position as NSF’s chairman. In a statement signed by the Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, the presidency described as “false and divisive”
Ningi’s insinuation that President Tinubu was operating a different version of the 2024 budget passed by the National Assembly.
Onanuga debunked what he described as Ningi’s “strange view” that the President presented a N25 trillion budget to the National Assembly, saying that there was no way the Senate could have debated and passed a N25trillion budget that was not presented to the federal legislature.
“We don’t expect a ranking senator not to pay due attention to details before making wild claims,” the presidency said. Onanuga also denied Ningi’s claim that President Tinubu’s 2024 budget is anti-North, adding that “the 2024 budget treated every part of the country justly and projects across different sectors are not skewed to any geo-political zone.”
The embattled senator, however, found comforting allies in the opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party(PDP), a civil organization interested in Nigerian budgets and public data, BudgIT, and the governor Bauchi, his home-state, Bala Mohammed.
The opposition party called for the investigation of the N3.7trillion alleged budget padding. In a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Debo Ologunagba, PDP chided the Senate for suspending Ningi without a proper inquest into the allegation of padding raised by him.
BudgIT, in a statement by its Director and Co-founder, Seun Onigbinde, threw its weight behind Ningi, contending that the embattled senator was right in his claim that there were no detailed allocations for for N3.7trillion in the 2024 budget.
The Bauchi governor, Mohammed, expressed his strong support for his senator. “I’m committed to examining Senator Ningi’s situation further,” the governor wrote on his official X account last Monday. “It is common knowledge that Senator Ningi is one of the best performing senators whose heritage and uprightness,ancestry and integrity are worthy of praise.”
We toe the line of those who have called for investigation of this matter because it is highly imponderable. With Ningi insisting on his allegation and some financial experts backing him, the veracity of the controversial N3.7trillion is inchoate and the facts justifying the insertion of that whopping sum into the budget remain largely foggy, even with official explanations so far.
That is why we are urging the red chamber and its leadership to allow an open, unfettered independent probe into the N3.7trillion saga, possibly by a consortium of credible audit firms or top notch financial experts. And their report should be made public unedited.
That, in our view, is the only action that could assert the lawmakers’ uprightness in this matter, which they had sedulously laboured to establish. Secondly, this matter is so weighty (because of the humongous amount involved) that the upper chamber ought to have recused itself from “trying” Ningi by itself and allowed an independent arbitration. No matter the level of angst that impelled their impulsion, the Senate should not have been the accuser, the prosecutor and judge at the same time in this matter. It is glaringly impolitic to have abrogated those roles to themselves in this matter.
Although the culpability or otherwise of the Senate in the N3.7trillion saga is yet to be convincingly determined, it is irrefutable that many Nigerians would take the three-month suspension slammed on Ningi with a pinch of salt until an independent investigation eventually vindicates the red chamber.
This is because budget padding has been a recurrent decimal with the National Assembly for years. There is hardly any year that the lawmakers do not tinker significantly with the budget estimates proposed by the Executive and rather than slash or abridge the original figures presented to them, they would always inflate them significantly.
Data from approved budget showed that the federal lawmakers inflated the annual budgets with a total of N3trillion within six years, 2017 to 2022, at an average of N516.66 billion every year.
The budget estimate presented to the National Assembly in 2017, for example, was N7.28trillion, but the lawmakers inflated the figure by N160 billion to make it N7.44 billion. In 2018, the budget was increased from N8.61 trillion to N9.12 trillion, a difference of N960 billion; from N8.83 trillion to N8.92 trillion in 2019 and from N10.33 trillion to N10.81 trillion in 2020.
In 2021, the budget was also inflated by N590 to balloon it from N13.98 trillion to N14.57 trillion and from N16.39 trillion to N17.12 trillion in 2022, a difference of N731 billion. Even in the current dispensation, the lawmakers upped the the initial estimate of N27.5trillion presented to them by President Bola Tinubu by N1.2 trillion to make it N28.7trillion.
The lawmakers would either insert new items or expunge or replace the items presented by the Executive and many times, they so act to feather their own nests by inserting votes to take care of the sleaze and superfluidity they call constituency projects.
And they get away with all these inexorably profligate acts with the acquiescence of the Executive, which deliberately does not contest the glaring usurpation as a bait to thaw the legislators and make them malleable. But the worst culprits in this budget padding heist are the Ministries, Departments and Agencies(MDAs), many of which connive with and lobby the lawmakers to get their budgets increased.
The National Assembly has also over time been a serious leech to the nation’s resources with outlandish and flamboyant tastes. They remain insensitive in their appetite for luxury, even with the nation in dire straits.
The current 10th National Assembly, in defiance of the recommendation of the Revenue Mobilization Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMFAC), last year opted for luxury cars as “operational vehicles” for its 469 members. Despite the economic downturn the nation is grappling with, the lawmakers rejected cheaper Sedan saloon cars and instead chose expensive Sport Utility Vehicles (SUVs), even though the cost is above the package prescribed for them and other public office holders by RMFAC.
This happens year in, year out. In 2015, for example, the federal lawmakers bought Peugeot 508 saloon cars for themselves and in 2020, they went for Toyota Camry cars. And in both instances, they exceeded the threshold recommended for them by RMFAC.
This malfeasance, however, cuts across virtually all the strata of political leadership under the expensive brand of democracy we are running. Most of our public office holders, elected and appointed, revel in a mesh of profligate latitude and waste, quite insensitive to the plight of the larger population who live in abject misery.
That is why calls have been stringent that we need to imbibe fiscal discipline and cut the costs of governance as the necessary penance for our profligate indulgence as a nation. That is the road to travel.
