Chairman of the Northern Senators Forum, Abdul Ningi, has alleged that the budget being executed by the Federal Government at the moment is not what the National Assembly passed.
In an interview with The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Ningi said: “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.
“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 are they, where is it going? So, we need to know this.”
The lawmaker further said, “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.
“This is what we intended to do. We are to meet the president. We will talk to him about the Mambila power project, Ajaokuta and the River Niger dredging. We will talk to him about the Niger Republic. Recently, they said they will construct a dam, this is not good for us.”
On the resolve of the Northern Senators to meet Tinubu, Ningi said: “This is true, for the past three months, we have engaged consultants to review the budget for us. We have some experts that are working on it line by line.
“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.”
On the performance of the present administration, Ningi lamented that “Things are getting worse compared to when President Bola Ahmed Tinubu took the leadership of the country. People are going through a lot of difficulties.
“We live in villages. We are going there to interact with them and they are lamenting seriously. They have nowhere to go, so they have no one to express their grievances to than us.”
