Senator Diket Plang, a lawmaker representing Plateau Central (APC) said that the National Assembly did not pad the 2024 budget.
Plang, a member of the Senate appropriation committee stated this on Monday in Jos while interacting with newsmen, noting that the National Assembly passed a budget of N28.77 trillion naira.
The lawmaker stated that President Bola Tinubu, on November 29, 2023, brought before a joint session of the National Assembly a budget of N27.2 trillion, but on the request of the executive, the National Assembly added about 1.5 trillion to make it N28.77 trillion.
“On the request by the executive, we added the said sum because of critical issues such as food security. Hunger had come in as a result of fuel subsidy removal and devaluation of the naira and there was a need for some measures.
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“They were not in the initial budget. There was an urgent need to provide additional money for the security agencies to enable them to purchase weapons.
“There are classified expenditures like those for the security agencies that are not captured in the printed budget,’’ he said.
Plang stated that the 10th National Assembly was lucky to be working with President Bola Tinubu, who knows the workings of the legislature, having been a former senator.
According to him, the executive arm was populated with former lawmakers, including the vice president, the chief of staff, the secretary to the government of the federation, and the wife of the president.
News Agency of Nigeria quoted Senator Plang saying that there is a cordial working relationship between the executive and the legislative arms.
WikkiTimes recalls that a Senator representing Bauchi Central and Chairperson of the Northern Senators Forum (NSF), Abdul Ahmed Ningi had revealed that there was an additional N3 trillion in the 2024 budget.
“For example, we had a budget of N28 trillion but after our thorough checks, we found out that it was a budget of N25 trillion. How and where did we get the additional N3 trillion from, what are we spending it for?” Ningi told the BBC Hausa.
But this revelation did not go well in the red chamber as the Senate eventually suspended Senator Ningi for three months over the allege budget padding.
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