BY YAHAYA KANA ISMAILA Ismaila
Before it was deleted, Senator Shehu Sani, the erstwhile activist turned senator who represented the good people of Kaduna Central Constituency in the 8th Senate attempted an explanation of the Nigerian term “Budget Padding” earlier today, 16th March, 2024..READ FULL ARTICLE HERE>>>>
In the post via his X (formerly Twitter) handle, the senator explained that budget padding occurs when projects are added to the appropriation document submitted by the president or the cost of some of the items in the budget are ballooned out of proposition (exaggeration mine).
The Wiki Dictionary threw at least 4 possible definitions of padding, but for this context, I will settle for the fourth which declared that padding is the use of ” anything of little value to fill up space”. This very apt definition correctly captures the current Nigerian practice of budget padding and is consistent with claims made by Senator Abdul Ningi that there exist insertions of over N3.7 trillion in the 2024 budget not tied to any project, address, or scope. In other words, a little under 4 trillion Naira of Nigeria’s 2024 budget that will be largely financed through borrowing, is just a frivolous entry of no fiscal value inserted to raise the total amount and line the pockets of legislators.
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Abdul Ningi, the senator representing Bauchi central district committed a crime of monumental proportions when he alleged that the 2024 budget had been loaded with fictitious or repeated projects, because of which the amount budgeted for some senate constituencies came up to a whopping N50 billion while his Bauchi Central constituency was given a meagre N1 billion. Not sure Ningi understood the full ramification of his claims, because, as a ranking senator, Abdul Ningi’s shedding of the senate leadership’s dubious secret was the highest crime a Nigerian politician can commit against the majority of ermm…very upright politicians that people the senate, him inclusive. I think the senate took a benign view of his crime when they tagged it “criminal misinformation.
Ningi’s outburst, though, a protest but not necessarily against criminal insertions in the 2024 budget. It is more correctly a flexing of his ranking senator status which was overlooked on the largesse distribution table thereby short-changing him personally as well as his constituency, as it was gifted N1 billion out of a possible N3.7 trillion on offer as per his findings. It is imperative at this juncture to note that Ningi’s findings have been corroborated by BudgIT, a public expenditure accountability platform, albeit with some reservations.
However, a Premium-Times investigation did not only corroborate Ningi’s claims that over N54 billion worth of projects in the 2024 budget is without a specific location, but it also revealed even more startling specifics of these uncharitable insertions. In one instance, Premium-Times found that the Sinnators duplicated same untraceable projects in two agencies: the National Horticulture Research Institute, Ibadan and the Nigerian Institute of Oceanography and Marine Research. One of the most pungent revelations by the Premium Times report detailed was how the N1.8 billion budget submitted by the president for National Centre for Agricultural Mechanisation was ballooned to N38.6 billion by the lawmakers.
There is also the case of the National Agricultural Council of Nigeria which was originally allocated N2.7 billion by the president but winded up with N22.9 billion after the legislators happened to it. Add this to the analysis made by Channels TV which shows that N82.5 billion was budgeted for 427 boreholes amounting to N197 million per borehole; and N212 billion for 1,1150 streetlights, amounting to N184 million per streetlight, and you just might get the true picture of the monumental fraud in the 2024 budget as well as the real crime of Senator Abdul Ningi.
Ningi admitted to making several efforts to see the senate president on the matter but was frustrated, until the last confrontation with Godswill Akpabio in company of other lawmakers of the Northern Senators forum (NSF). And as we can see from his interview with the BBC after that meeting, Ningi didn’t quite get the answers or possible settlement he went searching for.
That he was disowned by the NSF is a testament to the fact that he failed to observe table manners. This was further confirmed during the plenary session that sealed his persona non-grata status as senator after senator, including those who had met with him and were convinced by his findings to the extent of accompanying him on that confrontational voyage to the senate president, condemned him in no uncertain terms. It is immaterial now whether senator Ningi was right on the money with his claims or not. A swift deterrent has been served to warn other loud-mouthed senators plotting to toe the path of Ningi’s vainglorious adventure to snap out of their fantasies.
The narrative is not that of investigation. The chairman of the senate committee on Media and Publicity, Senator Yemi Adaramodu foreclosed that possibility when he explained that the exact amount claimed to have been p-added into the 2024 budget was statutory transfers to first-line charge agencies of government not domiciled in the ministries. Therefore, Ningi’s padding claims according to Adaramodu are errors of arithmetic. Adaramodu also denounced senator Jarigbe Jarigbe’s claims that some so called ranking senators got N500 million Naira for constituency projects. He referred journalists to the 2024 appropriation document. One wonders what Adaramodu will say now that the media has returned with more chilling details of their collective fraud!
As already explained by Shehu Sani’s now deleted post on X, Nigerians do not expect to see N500 million Naira entered against constituency project in the budget. After over 23 years of democracy, time which we have seen 6 republics of the legislature, it amounts to an insult to our collective sensibilities for Adaramodu to believe some of us do not know how these things work. Nigerians are aware that many phony or overpriced projects are domiciled in MDAs, and that all our good legislators need to do is walk in there, perfect some paperwork and use third party contractors to cash-in. This is public knowledge! Adaramodu must gear up to explain to us what “Cooperators Settlement” that was allocated billions in the budget means.
Budget padding didn’t start today, although many would argue that the intentions behind the earliest practice of padding were noble, in that they sought to include in the budget critical projects that would hitherto not have been conceptualized and included in it, maybe never executed if not through this method. In many respects, therefore, the entire gamut of constituency project as we know it in Nigeria, is the product of budget padding or statutory allocation captured under the Zonal Intervention Project (ZIP) – a N100 billion equal opportunity fund for every senator.
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However, budget padding has gone the way of other Nigerian practices that started with good intentions but have now developed into full-blown avenues for the wanton theft of our shared patrimony. Investigations by leadership newspaper has shown that Senate president Godswill Akpabio got over N18.5 billion domiciled in the ministry of agriculture alone for the construction of rural roads, markets and N500 million for the solar lighting of same roads in his constituency among several projects, totalling a combined N21 billion nestled in the budgets of 3 other agencies.
Not that I am implying anything, however, there already exists a sickening trail of unexecuted constituency projects all over Nigeria, so it naturally raises questions when such whooping sums are attributed to one senator and his constituency. Based on this, therefore, Senator Ningi has every right to raise alarm. The people of Bauchi central constituency are not inferior to the people of Akwa – Ibom Northwest Senatorial zone. Therefore, nothing justifies the allocation of over N40 billion (when allocations from all other ministries are computed) to Akwa-Ibom Northwest and Godswill Akpabio while Bauchi central is allocated a paltry N1 billion..READ FULL ARTICLE HERE>>>>
