The Senate on Tuesday applied the big hammer on Senator Abdul Ningi, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP Bauchi Central)for granting an interview to the BBC Hausa Service where he alleged that the 2024 budget was padded by more than N3 trillion.

His suspension for three months was anticipated. Political pundits were of the view that given the weight of the import of the interview and previous responses of the National Assembly leadership, Senator Ningi would be punished for opening his mouth too loud.

That happened at the plenary as attempts to have Tuesday’s sitting at the closed door were rebuffed by those who are determined to sanction Senator Ningi. The matter was debated in line with the standing order of the senate during plenary on Tuesday which lasted more than three hours.

The upper legislative chamber suspended the lawmaker after a motion on privilege moved by Solomon Adeola, Senator representing Ogun west. “My privilege has been breached because I was one of those who participated in the preparation of the budget. With what has transpired in the last three days, my privilege has been breached,” the senator said.

During the three hour duration, another Senator, Senator Jarigbe Agom-Jarigbe also caused tension in the Senate as he alleged that some ranking senators got N500 million from the passed 2024 budget.

Although Senator Ningi got up to defend himself, claiming that he had documents to back up his claim, majority of the senators sought his punishment.

Senator Opeyemi Bamidele, majority leader of the senate, said the comments by Senator Ningi were an attempt to “overthrow” Senate President Godswill Akpabio. “What he did was tantamount to a coup using the platform of the Northern Senators Forum (NSF),” Senator Bamidele said.

The political terrain had been unusually quiet for some time as a result of the hunger in the land and political leaders trying to be careful in their media engagements until Saturday when Chairman, Senate Committee on Population, Senator Abdul Ningi (PDP, Bauchi Central), alleged that N3.7tn was padded in the 2024 budget.

Senator Ningi chose a medium that the “talakawas”(masses) in the North listen to religiously -the BBC Hausa service – to throw the political “bomb”. The effect was unimaginable!

Ningi had in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation (Hausa Service) on Saturday, alleged that the budget passed by the National Assembly for the 2024 fiscal year was N25tn, while the one being implemented by the Presidency was N28.7tn.

In the interview, he was quoted to have said: “For the first time in Nigerian history, today we are operating two different budgets. One budget was approved by the National Assembly and signed by President Bola Tinubu and the one was implemented by the Presidency. The one approved by us is N25tn while the one being operated by the Federal Government is N28.7tn”

Senator Ningi who is the Chairman, Northern Senators Forum said the senators apparently discovered N3tn was inserted into the budgets for projects without locations stressing that this is the highest budget padding that happened in Nigerian history under Senator Akpabio’s watch.

Like a Canary, the Bauchi senator also informed his listeners that: “We resolved as the peoples’ representatives to see President Tinubu on this issue, with facts and figures, to ask him if he is aware of this embarrassment or not, then from there we will take action. Let Nigerians be patient with us. This is a national issue; it affects all Nigerians irrespective of party, tribe or religion.”

The Senate through its spokesperson, Senator Yemi Adaramodu (APC, Ekiti South) refuted the claim few hours after it’s broadcast, stating that there was no padding whatsoever in the budget.

On Monday, Senators Iyal Abbas from Adamawa, Ibrahim Bomoi from Yobe, Abdullahi Yar’Adua, and four others, disowned the statement made by the Forum’s Chairman, Senator Abdul Ningi stressing that the view he expressed was his personal opinion, sentiment and unfortunately skewed, incorrect and misleading.

They said there was never a time where we held a meeting and mandated Senator Ningi to address the press on the said matter adding that Mr President presented a budget of N27.5 trillion to the National Assembly and the Assembly passed a budget of N28.7 trillion based on the need to make increases or decreases in the appropriations of the various MDAs, which is in tandem with the legislative powers of the National Assembly in order to address critical projects and services across various sectors.

Reacting to Senator Ningi’s interview on Sunday , the presidency dismissed his claims as unfortunate, coming from a high-ranking senator.

Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Mr. Bayo Onanuga, said there is no truth whatsoever in the allegation made by Sen. Ningi that President Tinubu is operating two budgets for 2024.

He explained that on 29 November 2023, President Tinubu presented a budget of N27.5 trillion to the joint session of the National Assembly.The budget was made up of N9.92 trillion recurrent expenditure; debt servicing of N8.25 trillion and capital expenditure of N8.7 trillion.

“Contrary to the strange view expressed by Sen. Ningi, there was no way the Senate could have debated and passed a N25 Trillion budget that was not presented to the National Assembly”, he said.

Now left in the cold alone, Senator Ningi on Monday denied saying President Bola Tinubu was operating two different budgets for 2024.

Although the radio station said Senator Ningi spoke under the banner of the Northern Senators’ Forum, and claimed that the National Assembly passed N25 trillion as the 2024 budget and not the N28.7 trillion that was being implemented by the federal government, Senator Ningi said he was thoroughly misrepresented and was taken aback by the twist of events.

The embattled Senator also said he was not representing the Northern Senators Forum as reported, but spoke in his personal capacity adding: “With the press release I saw in the media yesterday, I am taken aback”.

Also reacting to Senator Ningi’s BBC interview, another senator, Jimoh Ibrahim (APC-Ondo South), said the Federal Government must charge Senator Abdul Ningi to court over alleged breach of peace in the National Assembly.

Senator Ibrahim, a member of the Appropriation Committee also said Ningi should be charged for criminal misinformation.

History of Budget Padding in Nigeria

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo had running battles with the National Assembly over the inclusion of New projects into the budget otherwise called “Constituency projects”. President Obasanjo argued and insisted that the work of the legislative arm is to make laws while the executive is to implement and execute it.

Under President Umoru Yar’Adua, the federal legislators continued and would have been checked but for the health challenge the President suffered. President Goodluck Jonathan did little to challenge budget padding until he was voted out of power.

In 2016, allegations of budget padding by principal officers of the National Assembly and senior civil servants resurfaced during the defence of the 2016 budget proposal. Then, some projects worth about N480 billion were inserted. The then Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole, while disowning the health budget details before the National Assembly said: “This was not what we submitted. We’ll submit another one. We don’t want anything foreign to creep into that budget. What we submitted is not there.” Similarly, the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, repudiated the ministry’s budget, saying, “No, that is not possible. That was definitely not what was proposed, this cannot be!”

In 2018, while assenting to the 2018 Appropriation Bill, President Muhammadu Buhari lamented: “The National Assembly made cuts amounting to N347 billion in the allocations to 4,700 projects submitted to them for consideration and introduced 6,403 projects of their own amounting to N578 billion.”

Before transmitting the 2021 budget to President Buhari, the National Assembly added several controversial projects, as well as increased and slashed the budget of some ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs).

The 2021 budget proposed by President Buhari to the lawmakers was N13.08 trillion. But upon passage, federal lawmakers used their legislative powers over the budget to increase the bill to N13.6 trillion, an increment of over N500 billion.

By this increase, the legislators made the proposal larger than the actual estimates. They also inserted new, controversial projects to the budget, numbering over 1000.

In 2022, President Buhari again lamented that the provisions made for about 10,733 projects were reduced, while 6,576 new projects were introduced into the budget by the National Assembly. The President argued compellingly , that the inclusion of the new provisions totalling N36.59 billion for NASS’s projects in the Service-Wide Vote negates the principles of separation of powers and financial autonomy of the different arms of government.

Several pro-transparency groups, including the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project, BudgIT, and Dataphyte, have frequently exposed how such constituency projects are shabbily implemented or completely abandoned.

Way Out

One way of shoving the challenge is to take the issue before the Supreme Court for interpretation of the constitution on budgeting. The second option in tackling the challenge is from the crime and law enforcement end. Lawmakers and civil servants implicated in budget padding and contract scams should not be spared. Failure to prosecute offenders has sustained corrupt practices, emboldened, and enriched the perpetrators.