Nigerian senators are risking bringing themselves into disrepute once again. In 2017, former President Olusegun Obasanjo described the National Assembly (NASS) as a “den of unarmed robbers” enmeshed in the accumulation of ill-gotten wealth.
Regrettably, the Nigerian legislature has long since abandoned its feedback and control role in governance and concentrates on manipulating budgets for personal and political advantage. It’s an open secret that the national budget is a conduit pipe through which lawmakers enrich themselves.
The former CEO of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), Professor Usman Yusuf, recently lamented the stark contrast between the extravagant spending of legislators and the pressing needs of the populace. NASS makes its own budget and spends it without transparency or public accountability and Nigerians are appalled by the fact that careful examination of the budget unearths non-transparent and unjustifiable financial allocations to the NASS.
Federal lawmakers raised their allocation from N197 billion to N344 billion which includes ridiculous items such as N3 billion for procurement of “library books”; N4 billion for a recreation centre; and N6 billion for car parks!
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NASS’s poor public reputation is due to their selfishness and focus on excessive benefits to themselves which have led to both the budget and oversight functions becoming avenues for borderline criminal activities. Professor Usman highlighted the approval for boreholes at a cost of N193 million each and units of street lighting costing N180 million each! As for “budget padding” i.e insertion of projects which were not planned for and did not have their cost estimates detailed in full, even as the controversy surrounding the budgetary allocation of funds not tied to any project is sparking outrage, NASS allegedly inserted over 7,000 projects with no national significance totaling N2.24 trillion.
A Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) senator representing Bauchi Central Senatorial District, Abdul Ningi, alleged that N3.7 trillion cannot be traced in the 2024 budget, saying that the “can of worms” he opened in the Senate “cannot be controlled”. Senator Jarigbe, representing Cross River North, was quoted as saying “Let us wash our dirty linen in public. If we want to go into those issues, all of us are culpable.”
On the other hand, the Northern Senators Forum (NSF), which Senator Ningi was chairing, said the view he expressed was his personal opinion not that of the forum and was unfortunately skewed, incorrect and misleading. After the allegations raised by Ningi were debated during plenary he was suspended for three months.
The suspension regarded more as an act of fear rather than one of rationality, has opened the Senate up to public ridicule with Ningi claiming it is “an honour” because he exposed the fact that while N25 trillion of the budget can be traced to projects, N3.7 trillion cannot be traced to any project! For example, the Federal Ministry of Education allocated N47.5 billion for the renovation of 50 schools with undisclosed locations!
Ningi’s real problem is that some senators say his exposures were “unnecessary” (but not untrue!) and should have been sorted out without the knowledge of the public! The PDP spokesman described Ningi’s suspension as a desperate move to suppress investigation, conceal and sweep facts under the carpet, and expressed regret for what they referred to as the apparent inclination to cover up sleaze in the polity.
They quite rightly criticised the Senate leadership for suspending a senator without conducting a thorough investigation and rightly condemned Ondo State’s Senator Jimoh Ibrahim’s utmost disdain for the processes and procedures of the upper chamber in a televised rant in which he vowed that if the Senate President failed to act he would write to the Inspector General of Police to prosecute Ningi for acts of “criminal negligence”, and spreading false information.
Those like Ibrahim who are alleging that “certain forces” from the North are trying to battle the Presidency should be ignored. This is total hogwash in an attempt to cover up the manner in which the budget was manipulated to accommodate personal interests.
Meanwhile, the Bauchi State governor laudably expressed full support for Ningi saying that in his opinion the importance of preserving dissent within our political landscape without resorting to punitive actions cannot be overemphasised.
Ironically it’s been confirmed that Ningi’s allegations have an element of truth in them because there is indeed no breakdown for N3.7 trillion allocated. Seun Onigbinde the Director and Co-founder of BudgIT confirmed this fact while claiming that NASS gave only broad summaries of its allocations in the 2024 budget without detailed breakdowns which everyone can interrogate giving rise to “transparency issues”.
Apparently, the allocations to the National Assembly (NASS), National Judicial Council (NJC), Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND) and others have no detailed breakdown. Lamentably the 2024 budget falls short of expectations because the omission of details creates doubts and speculation.
Nigerians should not be denied the right to know how these budgeted amounts are supposed to be spent and it’s widely speculated that Ningi’s tribulations are merely a crude attempt to deflect attention from allegations of budget padding.
By suspending Ningi, the Senate has denied a duly elected member his right to represent his constituency and indeed illogically denied his constituents representation! His suspension is suspect and has led to a widespread public belief that there is definitely more to the matter than meets the eye!
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