Abuja, March 18, 2024 – Peter Obi, the Presidential Candidate of the Labour Party (LP) the 2023 elections, has called for a review of the 2024 budget following the allegation of padding.
Last week, Abdul Ningi, a Senator representing Bauchi Central, threw the Senate into controversy after making an allegation that the 2024 federal government budget was padded by over N3 trillion.
In an interview with BBC, Ningi said the budget being implemented by the executive arm was not the same passed by the National Assembly.
Ningi was eventually suspended from the Senate for 3 months for making unfounded allegation after the two chambers had denied knowledge of the padding.
Obi called for a comprehensive review of the budget in a post on his account X, formerly Twitter, account on Monday.
He said he was calling for the review of the 2024 budget following the controversies that had trailed it and urged the executive and legislative arms to heed the call so as to protect the integrity of the budget.
He wrote: “Having followed the controversies trailing the 2024 budget, and having read some of the budgetary provisions and allocations of resources, I wish to respectfully appeal for a total review of the entire budget.
“The Executive and Legislative arms should initiate an immediate review of the budget as it is still in early days of implementation in order to enable them do urgent virement of resources to critical areas.
“The nation’s resources should adequately be appropriated to critical areas like security, fighting poverty and solving the challenges of hunger and food insecurity, power supply, especially considering the difficult times that we are in.” (GBN)
