Starting the new week, Nigeria’s National Assembly found itself trying to reverse a poor reputation situation created by one of its members who told a British broadcaster about the padding of the 2024 Budget of Renewed Hope.

Following reviews of the draft document that President Bola Tinubu submitted to the parliament on Wednesday, 29 November, it had taken just a month before the legislators approved a final figure of ₦28.7trillion although the previous unedited copy was ₦1.2trillion less.

What warranted the increase, as explained by Senate President Godswill Akpabio on the day of the passage, was the need to set new exchange rate benchmarks due to the weakening state of the Naira against the US Dollars. That explains the addition to the earlier ₦27.5trillion brought forward by the President, but Bauchi Central Senator Abdul Ningi disputed this in a BBC Hausa interview aired last weekend.

For the first time in Nigerian history, today we are operating two different budgets, Senator Ningi told the BBC on Saturday, 9 March.

One budget was approved by the National Assembly and signed by President Bola Tinubu and the [other] one was implemented by the presidency.

The one approved by us is ₦25tn while the one operating by the Federal Government is ₦28tn.

Apparently, we discovered ₦3tn was inserted into the budget for projects without locations. This is the highest budget padding that happened in Nigerian history under Senator Akpabio’s watch.

Well, the comments have created a firestorm that the Senate fears has dented the integrity of the Renewed Hope budget. Having sort of removed petrol subsidies, Mr Tinubu is banking on this year’s fiscal document to solve many of Nigeria’s economic problems and the majority of the parliamentarians believe in him.

ALSO READ: NCDMB together with a Senate committee working around local content policy that creates jobs

This is the reason the Senate has taken drastic measures showing disapproval over the hasty distribution of sensitive fictionalised information. By suspending Senator Abdul Ningi for three months, the parliament hopes to send a message that discourages rushing to the press when the news has not been confirmed beforehand.

A motion to ban the going rogue Senator had first proposed putting him away for 12 months, and then it got trimmed down to half a year and, later on, a quarter.

The Moment Senator Ningi Was Led Out Of The Chamber After Suspension#ChannelsTVNews pic.twitter.com/zA7PvVbwdU

— Channels Television (@channelstv) March 12, 2024

Justifying the correction, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, Senator Solomon Adeola while the parliament was locked in a three-hour debate about the implication of the information breach, explained to doubters what a rise in the budget had meant.

The additional increase of N1.2tn to what was presented by the President came during the appropriation process through additional funding requests and some items of expenditure to the Committee that were not included in the bill as submitted by the President and were meant to address additional funding for the Judiciary, Agriculture and Food Security, Works, Science and Technology, Education, Water Resources, National Assembly, Health and National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme (please see attached details).

The additional source of funding for the increase came from the increase in the benchmark of naira to [the] dollar from N750-N800, [the] increase in Government Owned Enterprises (GOEs) revenue and other sources.

Ayodele Johnson

Ayodelé is a Lagos-based journalist and the Content and Editorial Coordinator at Meiza. All around the megacity, I am steering diverse lifestyle magazine audiences with ingenious hacks and insights that spur fast, informed decisions in their busy lives.