N3.7 trillion controversy: No senator can deny 2024 budget was not padded —Onwubiko

Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, the national coordinator, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), speaks with IMOLEAYO OYEDEYI on the N3.7 trillion padding of the 2024 national budget, among other issues.

WHAT is your take on the recent N3.7 trillion 2024 budget padding controversy that gripped the Senate. Though the National Assembly leadership has debunked this, some persons have said there was an element of truth in what the suspended Senator Ningi said. What is your take on it?

So far nobody has denied that about N3.7 trillion is not pinned down to any specific project in the 2024 budget. Nobody can even deny that, because it has been established. Even BudgiT, the Civil Society Organisation (CSO) that specializes in national budget analysis, has even backed the position that the said amount of money isn’t traceable to any project in the budget. And it is increasingly becoming clearer that what happened was that the senators allocated the huge sum to themselves. Some of the senators got N200 million; some got N500 million. As we have seen so far, most of the senators have been coming to the media to explain this. So nobody is going to deny anything again. It is now an open secret, but it is just very unfortunate that Nigeria has a senate that is not very transparent and accountable. This is because there is no justification whatsoever under the law or any convention for the senators to allocate certain sums of money to themselves in the name of Zonal Intervention. That is flagrant illegality and it must not be condoned. It is not constitutional and purely illegal. To me, it is even a crime against the Nigerian state. The senators even shot themselves on the leg by suspending the person who exposed the rot in the senate when they should have handled it better in a way such thing has been handled before. But unfortunately for them, they kicked out the man and the whole thing is now out in the open. I don’t even think anybody can even deny anything now, because everything is right there in public space. Some of the senators said they got over N200 million; some said they even got N100 million. In fact, almost all the senators have been coming out with the revelations. And Nigerians were not aware of all these, not until that senator from Bauchi State opened the cankerworm. It is very unfortunate.

Some high-ranking senators have claimed that the money was meant for the zonal intervention projects for their respective constituencies, and that they are even part of the national budget…

They are not parts of the budget. Had it been they were parts of it, there wouldn’t have been one N3.7 trillion that will be hanging, which they are now beginning to explain to us. But come to think of it, have you ever heard of the zonal intervention project or vote as they call it? What we have always known is the constituency project, which itself has been very disputable. This is because the job of a senator is not to award contracts. He is lawmaker and not a contract-awarding executive. So it is an aberration constitutionally. But this time, the senators call it zonal intervention. What do they mean by that? And why was it not debated in the public? Why did they not carry Nigerians and their constituencies along? Who did the senators discuss with? Aren’t they representatives of the people? And what kind of intervention do they want to give to the zones? And were the zones even aware that they are getting some kinds of votes for those kinds of intervention? These are questions Nigerians need to pose to the senators.

The whole thing is just an illegality that is now being exposed. That is why they are now running from pillar to post just to explain themselves to Nigerians. But it is too late to do that. They are just lucky that we are in a country where anything goes. Once something happens, everybody just sit down and simply turn deaf hears to the issue. Otherwise, by now, the Nigerian students and the rest of the people are supposed to be somewhere protesting peacefully and demanding comprehensive answers from the senators. But nobody is doing anything. Yet, people are dying of hunger every day. And it is because of such hostilities that the country’s citizens are suffering and dying. One need to ask where the senators discussed the kind of zonal intervention project Nigerians, in their individual constituencies, need that makes them to know that it is going to cost N200 million or more.

Meanwhile, I read somewhere today (Saturday) that the allocation of the Senate President alone is about N2.5 billion, though I am not too sure of that fact. But it is there in the public domain. I heard the explanation from Senator Abaribe that though all the senators are supposed to get the same amount of money, the reason some senators in the North got lesser amount is because the Northern geo-political zones (North-West, North-Central and North-East) have more states than those in the South. I know he also tried to explain the whole controversy, but my point is: why didn’t the senators engage the members of the public in some of these things, so that Nigerians would have known about it. This is because it is the masses that need the intervention or are the projects for the senators?

It has been argued in the past that there is nothing like budget padding and that what the executive sends to the National Assembly is simply an appropriation estimates that is expected to also get inputs from the legislators. How true can this be?

There is budget padding. In fact, some of the past Nigerians senators have come out to explain and prove it exists. Former senator from Kaduna State, Shehu Sani, was recently quoted to have said that there is something that is called budget padding and he even explained how it is being done. In his explanation, he said some ministries may want like 10 buckets in the budget, but the Senate committee on their own will now add like 20 to it. Meanwhile, the ministry has only demanded for 10 buckets. The question is: what are you going to do with the added 20 when the need of a specific ministry is 10. That is simply called padding, because you are adding something that the ministry doesn’t need, which means somewhere in between the line, the senators can go behind and settle among themselves to share the additions. You need to educate Nigerians on how things like this are done.

Above all, looking at the current 10th NASS under Senator Godswill Akpabio, will you say it has been effective so far in terms of fulfilling it constitutional roles effectively?

To begin with, I will say we don’t even have a Senate. What we have is just some kind of garbage in, garbage out officers. They are not independent, and are just like sales boys of Mr President. They do whatever he orders them to do. Even when they suspended Senator Ningi for three months, which some people have described as illegal, because they do not have the right to suspend a serving senator for such a long period of time, the first place all the senators went after moving for the suspension was the Mr President’s office. President Tinubu is the head of the executive arm of the government and not the president of the Senate. So why did the senators rushed to his office to report to him when they finished their internal fight? That tells you that we don’t have a Senate. In actual fact, the de-facto Senate President of Nigeria now is President Tinubu, because the senators go to tell him about whatever happens in the National Assembly often, and there hasn’t been anything signed from the president’s office that was rejected by the senators. In fact, everything that goes to the Senate has always been passed. So, I will say there is absolutely no difference between the Akpabio Senate and the Ahmed Lawan ninth Senate, even though the current Senate president has tried to be diplomatic just to reflect certain independence of the senate. But the truth is they are not independent of the executive at all.

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