Senate grills finance minister over N1.7trn budget stuffing allegations

The Nigerian Senate questioned Zainab Ahmed, the finance minister, on the alleged fiscal padding.

Ms. Ahmed was initially summoned by the legislator to explain the insertions in the 2023 budget allocations of certain Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).

It was convened after the heads of the MDAs concerned could not provide explanations for the insertions in their projects. Most of them expressed ignorance of the allowances and said the Ministry of Finance was in a better position to explain.

PREMIUM TIMES reported that on November 21, the Senate Special Tasks Committee uncovered N206 billion in the 2023 budget of the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development.

Minister Sadiya Farouq was unable to provide details of the proposed allocation. She told the panel that she knows how the N206 billion was inserted into her ministry's 2023 budget by the Ministry of Finance.

Besides the humanitarian ministry, an additional N8.6 billion was discovered in the Defense Ministry budget, N195.5 billion in the Energy Ministry estimates, among others – all of which faked ignorance.

Explanation

Ms. Ahmed appeared before the Senate Appropriations Committee to explain the allocations.

She told the panel that the allocations which some MDAs claimed to be unaware of, had been approved by the Federal Executive Council (FEC), before the presentation of the budget itself by President Muhammadu Buhari in October.

"All proposed budget amounts, such as the 206 billion naira in the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, the 8.6 billion naira in the Ministry of Defence, the 195 billion naira in the estimates of the Ministry of Energy, were all captured prior to the presentation by Mr. President,” she said. "Most of these sums are bilateral or multilateral loans captured in the budget of the agencies selected for the execution of the projects for the sole purpose of transparency."

She said that the total of these loans considered in the proposed budget of the relevant agencies is N1.771 trillion.

She also faulted the heads of the concerned MDAs for not conducting a thorough review of their approved budget proposals, otherwise the issue of budget insertion or padding would not have arisen at all.

READ ALSO: Budget filling? Why we inserted N1.7 trillion projects into MDA budgets – Minister

"...this is the realization of what prompted Defense Minister Bashir Magsshi to apologize after feigning ignorance of N8.6 billion in his ministry's budget during interface with the Senate Defense Committee,” she said.

A satisfied committee chairman, Barau Jibrin (APC, Kano North), said the minister's clarifications were "well understood by all committee members". He also praised her for "providing transparency by putting these loans or grants on the budget".

The review and adoption of the 2023 budget is in its final phase.

The Appropriations Committee is currently collating reports from other committees for a final report to be presented and discussed in plenary - another legislative day.

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