Pioneer National Chairman of All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Chekwas Okorie, has alleged plot to blackmail President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on the budget padding saga.
In a statement yesterday, titled: ‘It is time to allow President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to govern Nigeria’, Okorie alleged that those behind the plot were also targeting Senate President, Godswill Akpabio.
The former presidential candidate, who was reacting to the allegation by northern senators that the 2024 budget was padded with N3 trillion by the Presidency, expressed worries that while
President Tinubu was yet to complete one year in office, a “few vocal political scavengers from a particular section of the North” had vowed to blackmail, intimidate and distract him until his administration was derailed.
He observed that the same political elite, who were 99 per cent responsible for the multi-dimensional backwardness in their own part of the North, were out to hide under the umbrella of the non-existent monolithic North to mobilise forces against the government in power.
While urging Nigerians to be vigilant and protect their hard earned democracy, Okorie noted that former President Muhammadu Buhari ruled the country for eight years and history will judge him.
“President Tinubu should be allowed and cooperated with to govern Nigeria, and history will judge him afterward,” he added.” The statement reads: “On Sunday, March 10, 2024, almost all Nigerian newspapers and social media platforms were awash with the highly inflammatory news of the alleged padding of the 2024 budget with a whopping N3 trillion. This weighty allegation was made by a group that called itself the Northern Senators Forum.
“The Chairman of the group, Senator Abdul Ningi, chose the British Broadcasting Service (BBC) Hausa to make this broadcast in which he made other weighty and inciting allegations that portray the North as being at the receiving end of the Tinubu administration. The Senate President, Godwill Akpabio, was also portrayed as being complicit in shortchanging the North in the 2024 Appropriation Act.
“In the publications under reference, the Senate Committee Chairman on Media and Publicity, Senator Yemi Adaramodu, promptly debunked the allegations of his northern colleagues.”
He said the allegation came not long after Senator Ali Ndume, another prominent member of the Northern Senators Forum, “came out firing from all cylinders, threatening political consequences if President Tinubu did not order the reversal of the administrative actions of the Central Bank of Nigeria and the Aviation Ministry to move some of their departments to Lagos for a more efficient and cost effective service delivery.”
He also said that a recent visit of the Israeli Ambassador to the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, attracted the ire of Abubakar Gumi, a controversial Islamic cleric, who imputed religious undertone in what was clearly an official visit.
He recalled that it was the same Gumi that raised an alarm that the appointment of Nyesom Wike as the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory by President Tinubu was a plot to deny the North of their birth right.
He said: “Opposition politics is healthy and contributes to good governance if it is constructive. I am an apostle of constructive opposition. I have observed with dismay that when the same political elite who are 99 per cent responsible for the multi dimensional backwardness in their own part of the North, are out to hide under the umbrella of the non-existent monolithic North to mobilise forces against the government in power,” he said.
![[FILE] Senate President Godswill Akpabio.](https://guardian.ng/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Akpabio-Senate-President-1-150x150.webp)