Look, I believe Senator Abdul Ningi should have told Nigerians that he was raising an alarm and not stating a fact. In that interview, he spoke as if he had facts. Obviously, He did not!
He publicly admitted he was wrong yesterday when the chairman of the senate committee on appropriation, Senator Olamilekan Adeola Yayi spelled out all the details of the 2024 budget and it was added to arrived at N28.7trn total
The N3.7trn which Abdul Ningi was hiding under to instigate his northern hypocrisy was what were voted.for the Government Owned Enterprises, GOE, which are statutory bodies separated from the financial control of the federal government.
Their budget is a first line charge , which means it’s deducted first line from federation account.
They are The Judiciary, Northeast Development Commission, NNDC, INEC, UBEC, NASS and 3-other statutory bodies.
So, when it was openly spelled out at plenary yesterday, Ningi admitted he was misinformed by the consultant he claimed to have hired to do the analysis for him.
And even other northern senators lampooned him because being a ranking senator, he ordinarily should know that the budgets of GOEs with statutory powers would not be detailed inside budget booklet which he claimed to have worked on with his consultant.
It means, the plot was just a conspiracy to instigate against the leadership of Akpabio just like northerners have always done anytime the southerners are leading the Senate or House of Rep.
This is not the first time someone has been expelled from a hallowed chamber. satan also lied and was expelled from Heaven. Nigeria is a delicate country. Some unpatriotic citizens have been calling for a military coup. Ningi’s alarm could have given military adventurers a reason to act.
What he ought to have done was to investigate and if verified, then go public. But by going public without first verifying his claims, he undermined the National Assembly, the Federal Government, and democracy. I have no sympathy for him.
Let’s examine the falsehood in Ningi’s allegation as clearly detailed by the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriation, Senator Adeola Yayi Olamilekan.
“If there were no ulterior motives by Senator Ningi and some aggrieved senators targeted at derailing the APC administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and creating bickering between the Executive and the Legislature, he would have sought for clarifications on the discrepancies noted by their consultants for more enlightenment on budgeting and parliamentary processes before rushing to the press with misinformation.
“It is now apparent that a ranking senator of Senator Ningi’s standing who should be conversant with the budgetary processes and nuances of the National Assembly, having served in both the House of Representatives and the Senate as a parliamentarian is completely ignorant of the process or is only being mischievously partisan against the administration of President Tinubu and the existing cordial and harmonious relationship between the executive and the legislature.
“For the records, the N25 trillion Senator Ningi and his ‘consultants’ presented as the budget (N25.45trillion approximately) being implemented by the Executive are the details of the budgets of all MDAs alone.
“It is unfortunate and regrettable that Senator Ningi and his consultants did not take into account that the budgets of some bodies are not captured in the details but in the summary of the Appropriation Act as passed.
“All appropriations for Statutory Transfers, GOEs and TETFUND are only in the summary of the Act and not in the details.
“The total sums of these appropriations captured in the summary and not in details as it is constitutional and in line with our budgetary process is N3.32 trillion (which was what Ningi claimed was padded into the 2024 Budget).”
Adeola explained the breakdown of the N3.32trillion as follows:
• National Judicial Council – N341.6bn,
• National Assembly – N344.8bn,
• Public Complaints Commission – N14bn,
• Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) – N40bn,
• Government-Owned Enterprises (Recurrent) – N1.059trn,
•TETFUND (Recurrent) – N35bn,
• Government-Owned Enterprises (Capital) N820.9bn and
• Tetfund (Capital) – N665bn.
“A simple arithmetic by Senator Ningi and his ‘consultants’ of the MDAs’ details and the figures of Statutory Transfers, GOEs and TETFUND in the summary, would amount to exactly the figures of the 2024 Appropriation of N28.77 trillion.
And obviously, the generality of the senators were against Ningi for false allegation when he could have sought for more explanation before raising a false alarm on a budget padding that never exist.
Again, after the Chairman of the Appropriation had given detailed explanation, Ningi himself realized he had fooled himself and he confessed this by saying he is pleased with the detailed.explanation by the Chairman, Appropriation but that he does not know how much the senate president was earning or the amount he.spent on his official cars. That the Senate president number of aides is not known to him.
Obviously, everyone knows he was just trying to safe face with the irrelevance
Infact, Senator Jarigbe (Cross Rivers) said he was told by Ningi that Ranking senators like himself (Ningi) were given ‘slots for’ N500m worth of Constituency’ Projects while Jarigbe was just N75m. This means Ningi actually went as far as trying to recruit more senators to his side against the Akpabio leadership of the Assembly by instigating dissents against Akpabio leadership.
But during press briefing yesterday evening, Jarigbe recanted. He said he has got better clarification from the Assembly leadership on constituency projects distribution to senators and he was.convinced.
Even Senator Ndume known for always attacking Akpabio was more direct . He said, how they first started the north against South conspiracy on their Northern Senators Forum platform was when they first posted a false allegation that Tinubu and Akpabio were against the north that in the 2024 budget was skewed against the north, that out of N18trn allocated for capital expenditure that N10trn was voted for the South while the north had just N8trn.
Ndume says Senator Waba was the sharer on their WhatsApp platform but he immediately called their attention to it that it was a blatant lie and a falsehood because the 2024 budget has just N8.7trn for capital expenditure and NOT N18trn. He said that was what killed that agitations from going viral .
And that when Ningi started this one too, he spoke to him to make his information available for clarification before he will go public and mess himself up , but Ningi didn’t make it available till he went to grant BBC interview