That N3.7tr budget padding scandal at National Assembly

The 10th National Assembly’s fraternal efforts to whitewash alleged malfeasance in the 2024 Appropriation Law are shameful in all ramifications. While the routine dishonesty about common patrimony is oddly familiar, the Senate has taken budget buccaneering and heist to an uncommon height. What Nigerians deserve is not a deft dismissal of the very weighty allegation levelled by an experienced member who is in a position to know the facts; but a patent explanation, with facts and figures, to seriously debunk the allegations. By hurriedly sending their accuser on suspension, the Godswill Akpabio-led Senate has only succeeded in impressing Nigerians that the matter has been swept under the carpet. But Nigerians are no fool; they are not in doubt about the identity of their adversaries, including their elected representatives.

Almost a quarter gone in the 2024 appropriation year, Senator Abdul Ningi stirred the hornet’s nest in an interview granted to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Hausa Services, where he alleged N3.7 trillion worth of budget padding in the 2024 budget. It expectedly drew the ire of both the Federal Government and his Senate colleagues, who summarily got him suspended for three months in a stormy session at the National Assembly. Pricked by his conscience, another member of the House, Senator Jarigbe Agom-Jarigbe, dropped the clanger when he said: “We are all culpable,” presumably of budget padding. And he revealed deeper rot before his mic got turned off from the control room. “Some so-called senior senators here got N500 million each from the 2024 budget. I am a ranking senator. I didn’t get anything. (Therefore,) No senator has a right to accuse Senator Ningi…,” Agom-Jarigbe puffed on the floor of the hallowed chamber.

Neither the executive nor the National Assembly has convincingly denied the padding episode. The Senate simply said that the N3 trillion allegedly added to the 2024 budget was statutory transfers to first-line charge agencies of government not domiciled in the ministries. Their explanation, through the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Media and Publicity, Yemi Adaramodu, came some days after Ningi’s suspension; and is considered by many as an afterthought. On his part, President Tinubu reportedly said proponents of budget padding did not know the arithmetic of budgeting. “Those who are talking about malicious embellishment in the budget; they did not understand the arithmetic and did not refer to the baseline of what I brought,” said the president, assuring the senators that “your integrity is intact.”

Padding is a recurring issue in the Nigerian National Assembly and past presidents have said as much. The subtle plot to legitimise theft, fraud, and corruption came to the public knowledge in 2017 when Jibrin, as chairman of the House Committee on Appropriation, alleged that the 2016 national budget was “padded” by principal officers to the tune of N4 billion, while 10 committees of the House introduced projects worth about N284 billion into the budget illegally. Again in 2021, the budget proposed by former President Muhammadu Buhari to the lawmakers was N13.08 trillion. But upon passage, it was increased to N13.6 trillion, an increment of over N500 billion. In the 2024 edition, according to fact-finding by BudgIT, there are “unruly insertions” in the budget, to reaffirm Agom-Jarigbe’s position that they (the senators) are all culpable.

The recurring decimal of budget padding in 2024 should have been an opportunity for the Senate to fully and finally stop the perceived ill, if indeed there is nothing to hide. Their action only suggests that Nigerians should expect further ruminations about budget padding in the near future. That does nothing good to the image of lawmakers and the institution of the national Assembly.

The self-righteous posture Ningi’s colleagues did put up in the defence of the allegation is equally unimpressive and disgraceful. The lawmakers ended up telling displeased Nigerians to only complain if they do not see projects worth N500 million in their constituencies!

Notably, whistleblower Ningi has been a part of the sleaze for 17 years of being in the Senate and got the hammer for apparently breaking the oath of nondisclosure of plundering of the commonwealth. Until he resigned on the day he got suspended, he was chairman of the Northern Senators Forum. But none of the northern caucus showed up in Ningi’s defence.

If the padding allegation holds any substance, it is dishonourable for the National Assembly to overstep its bounds and inflate the budget proposal of N27.503 trillion to N28.77 trillion. That is an increase of N1.2 trillion in a budget that plans to borrow N9 trillion of its expenditure to cushion low revenue. Ab initio, it is not in the remit of the Appropriation Committee or NASS to rewrite the budget draft that has been put together by professionals, who simultaneously have both eyes on needs and their affordability. It is also bizarre that the NASS made the budget vetting process a party affair, in electing a member of the ruling party to chair such a sensitive position that has erstwhile been bequeathed to the leader of the opposition party for fair scrutiny.

The lawmakers did not dispute that principal officers also awarded hefty votes to themselves and for their so-called constituency projects. Who approved the votes and through which process outside of the appetite of its beneficiaries? That is neither transparency nor propriety.

Lest Akpabio forgets, it was under his watch that the NASS elected to purchase SUVs worth billions of naira in the middle of austerity. Nigerians have not forgotten his Christmas “prayers” sent to “accounts” and “emails” of each senator. That is Akpabio’s Senate with no guardrails! Now, it is the turn of some privileged principal officers, in breach of public trusts, to award themselves N500 million that will never be accounted for. Is anyone therefore alarmed that bandits are requesting a N1 billion ransom tag on 280 schoolchildren kidnapped in Kaduna? Indeed, in a sane country and on the heels of that disastrous budget padding revelation, most lawmakers would have been compelled to resign, arraigned in court and straight to the correction centre. And if the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) is serious about fighting corruption, it already knows where to begin.

For Tinubu, there is an urgent need to pull back the country from the impending fiscal doom. Already, the controversial 2024 budget is dead on arrival with all the projections now way off the budget calculation. This is not the time for the political class to live lavishly on the cards of masses that are pummelled daily by seething hardship. Tinubu, who keeps riding in convoys of 30 to 50 vehicles and lawmakers binging on public funds, have no moral right to exhort the masses to tighten their belts and endure disastrous economic policies. Such charity should begin with Tinubu, lawmakers, and their cronies. The Nigerian reality is not far off from the economic implosions in the likes of Zimbabwe, Pakistan, and Haiti. The time to save Nigeria is now.