President Bola Tinubu’s sketchy N27.5 trillion budget for the 2024 fiscal year has sparked a fresh controversy.
Tinubu had on Wednesday presented budget to a joint session of the National Assembly, during which he asked the lawmakers to pass the document in 30 days.
The budget passed its first reading in both chambers of parliament when President Tinubu presented it.
A day after the president’s presentation, the Red Chamber began the debate on the general principles of the proposals without getting the breakdown of the estimates, including allocations to different sectors.
Our correspondent observed that the senators before the debate commenced, were only distributed copies of the budget speech and the lead debate presented by the Senate Leader, Michael Opeyemi Bamidele.
Senator Kawu Sumaila (Kano) had urged his colleagues to suspend the consideration of the budget pending when they were provided with the details.
He had said, “We are representing interests here. Where are the budget details? We need to have the bill. We don’t have any idea about the sectoral allocations and what our constituents will be getting. It is very strange in the parliament.”
But his colleagues continued with the consideration, a deviation from previous budget considerations in the parliament, where the lawmakers were given the breakdown of the budget estimates and convened in plenary to debate its general principles after studying the document.
Weighing in, Jaafar Jaafar, founder of Daily Nigerian, an online publication, in a post via X on Friday, said he spoke to the senator after the president’s budget presentation.
According to him, the senator alleged that President Tinubu came with an empty case to present the 2024 Budget at the National Assembly on Wednesday.
“I spoke with a Nigerian senator last night to get the detail of sectoral allocations in Tinubu’s 2024 budget. To my surprise, he said the president came with an EMPTY case! “We sat yesterday to discuss the general principles of the budget but nobody got a copy. The truth is that the president came with an empty case,” he said,” Jaafar wrote.
Responding to Jafaar’s post, some users wondered how the “empty” budget passed a second reading at parliament.
Below are some of such comments:
@D_Ministar: “Wow! I’m marble. Seriously though, transparency shuld be the cornerstone of our governance, yet for PBAT to arrive witout detailed sectoral allocations in the 2024 budget for the senate is disconcerting. Sha! It’ll be interesting to see hw this situation unfolds.”
@Nnekanwa1: “Bunch of Fraudulent people, blame Nigerians supporting this Wickedness against humanity because big tribe ,tribe is what is keeping Nigeria the way it is till today , Sickening”
@Safeera_Abba1: “It’s hard to believe that a country’s budget would be presented with no actual details. I know that the budget is an important tool for setting priorities and allocating resources, so it’s strange that there wouldn’t be any information to discuss.”
@ChibuzorUdoliza: “And the same budget has already passed a second reading in the green chambers, the HoR, even without known details. This NASS will be worse that the usual state HoA standard that we know.”
@AbuMaheer75: “The Senate house is one of the numerous problems we are having in this country. Until the house is scraped, we’ll remain fixed.”
@FaroukUmarKubau: “That’s quite surprising and concerning. If accurate, it raises questions about transparency and governance. It might be worth monitoring official announcements or news sources for updates on the situation and the government’s response.”
