Alleged N3tr Padding: Obi Urges Senate To Come Clean, Clear All Allegations.

Peter Obi, the main opposition voice and Labour Party standard bearer, has urged the Senate to come clean on all allegations of N3 trillion padding in the 2024 budget.

In a press statement issued by Dr. Yunusa Tanko, Chief Spokesman, Obi told the upper chamber on Wednesday that the public deserves to know the truth about the allegations, especially since the Senate and the Executive are at odds on the issue and new allegations about the sharing of constituency funds in the budget are emerging.

According to the former Governor of Anambra State
“The controversy over the alleged N3 trillion padded into the 2024 budget raised by a Senator continues, as the Senate’s response of suspending the whistleblower has failed to address critical issues raised by the allegation.”

“The Senator is insisting on his allegation, and the Executive agreed that there was only N1.2 trillion padded, not N3 trillion as the Senate claims.

“New allegations have surfaced regarding the Senate leadership’s indiscriminate and unbalanced allocation of constituency projects.

“A civic group, Budgit, has also added their voice to the Senator’s agreement through an official. They claim that the 2024 Appropriation Act lacks detailed project allocations totaling approximately N3.7 trillion.

“Because the Senate suspension of the senator involved has not addressed the issue, they still owe the Nigerian public a clear clarification over the various claims and counterclaims, including those of the executive arm, so that they can know exactly what is going on, as well as disclose to the public the amounts allocated for constituency projects for appropriate public monitoring of implementation.

“In my previous comment, I emphasised what we can achieve with the N3 trillion by demonstrating that it is greater than the combined national budgets of the two most critical components of the human development index, health and education.

“Now that the executive branch has accepted that the padded amount is only N1.2 trillion, it remains a significant amount, especially given that it is nearly five times the N251.47 billion proposed for Universal Basic Education, the country’s educational foundation.

“In Nigeria today, the greatest challenge to human resource development is education, which has been identified as the most critical at the basic level. Nigeria currently has approximately 20 million out-of-school children due to inadequate educational investment. These are resources that could have been used to get our children off the streets and back to school.

“The N1.2 trillion that the executives claimed to have padded, if channelled through critical areas of development, could have positively impacted the nation and lifted the people.

“And if the Budget report is correct, that there is approximately N3.7 trillion without any detailed project allocations, I strongly urge the Senate to do more detailed work in channelling these funds into critical areas of development – education, health, and bringing people out of poverty – which will, in turn, reduce the criminality we are seeing today.

“In the midst of the country’s excruciating hardship, we must urgently put an end to all waste of our limited resources. Allow every penny of our public funds to be used for public benefit. That is the only way to create the New Nigeria that we are striving for.