The Northern Senators Forum has announced its plan to discuss with President Bola Tinubu the alleged discovery of N3 trillion in padding in the 2024 budget.
Senator Abdul Ningi (PDP-Bauchi Central), the Chairman of the Forum, shared this information in an interview with the BBC Hausa Service.
Ningi mentioned that the Forum had hired consultants to thoroughly analyze the 2024 budget to uncover how an additional N3 trillion was secretly added beyond the approved amount by lawmakers.
He also mentioned that the Forum intends to inform Senate President Godswill Akpabio about the alleged N3 trillion ‘padding’ soon.
Regarding the Forum’s decision to scrutinize the 2024 budget, Ningi stated: “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.
“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.”
In response to the supposed discovery of N3 trillion padding in the budget, Ningi added: “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. 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.“
