‘He submitted flash drive containing the details,’ Lawmaker counters colleague over claims Tinubu submitted ’empty budget boxes’

Lawmaker representing Doguwa/Tundun Wada federal constituency in Kano State, Alhassan Doguwa has countered the claim that President Bola Tinubu did not submit budget details to the National Assembly.

On Wednesday, Tinubu presented the 2024 appropriation bill of N27 trillion before a joint session of the national assembly.

The president said the budget would cement macroeconomic stability and increase capital spending and allocation to reflect the priority areas of his administration.

Speaking in an interview with BBC Hausa on Friday, Yusuf Galambi, a lawmaker representing the Gwaram federal constituency in Jigawa, saidthe president presented the budget without details.

Galambi, a member of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), said the document Tinubu presented did not contain a breakdown of what every ministry, agency and department of the government would get.

The lawmaker said the development was “shocking”, describing it as a “deceit”.

“We checked the case of the document he presented and found it empty,” Galambi had said.

“In the history of the national assembly, such an incident has never happened until this year and this is not what the constitution of the country said should be done.

Speaking with journalists on Friday, Doguwa said before the president presented the budget, he had earlier submitted a flash drive containing soft copies of the budget.

The federal lawmaker said the national assembly did not receive an empty budget box, adding that the claim is “baseless, unfounded”.

“What people don’t know is that President Tinubu had since submitted a flash drive of the whole budget before his presentation to the joint chambers,” he said.

“Stop the misrepresentation of facts, we did not receive empty 2024 budget boxes from President Tinubu.

“What people don’t know is that Mr President had earlier submitted a flash drive as a soft copy of the 2023 budget, which is now being printed out in hard copies.

“As usual, he brought one single hard copy of the budget to the floor.”