By Osondu Ahirika
Let me take a brief leave of my gossip series to Sahara Reporters and deal with this hot breaking news.
In March 2024 the Senate of Nigeria was enmeshed in turbulent controversy.
Senator Abdul Ningi had raised dust over alleged budget padding against the Presidency and Senate President Godswill Akpabio.
Ningi told the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Hausa Service, the Northern Senators’ Forum (NSF), had uncovered lopsidedness and padding of the 2024 budget to the tune of N3 trillion.
It led to his suspension by the embarrassed Senate. The rest is history.
That wasn’t the first time we would hear about budget padding.
I recall it made a buzz when President Muhammadu Buhari signed into law the 2022 Appropriation Bill.
He expressed strong reservations on what he called, “worrisome changes”, made by the National Assembly to the 2022 Executive Budget proposal.
Again, the back and fro of that controversy between the Presidency and the National Assembly is history.
We can therefore understand why Governor Umo Eno has made stringent policy statements on budgeting in Akwa Ibom State going forward.
If you missed the new directives, here we go again to review them.
-The Budget Office is now under the Office of the Governor.
-The Director of Budget will henceforth report directly to the Governor.
– Nothing shall be included in the budget without the knowledge and express approval of the Governor.
-The Governor takes full responsibility for the budget and therefore it must have his buy-in.
-The Budget Department must deliberately create a sinking fund for compulsory savings for unforeseen projects within the financial year.
I’m not surprised the Governor made this smart move.
The attempt to blackmail him through Sahara Reporters having failed was a red flag.
As birds learn to fly without perching, men must learn to shoot without missing.
Sahara Reporters is as powerful a news medium as the BBC.
Any bad news with them goes viral.
Those who whispered to SR that the
Akwa Ibom Government budgeted N14.7 billion to renovate Governor’s Lodge, and buy SUVs for State Lawmakers were playing an ‘Abudul Ningi’.
The misinformation was to trigger an outcry of misallocation of funds and reckless expenditure against the Governor Umo Eno-led administration.
It was akin to allegations of budget padding.
You disagree?
Let’s define it.
1. “Budget padding is the inclusion of a large chunk of extra money in the nation’s budget, earmarked for non-existing projects/purposes, with the intention to divert such funds for personal use.”
2.“Padding refers to a situation where legislators resolve to rewrite the budget by introducing new items outside the estimates prepared and presented by the President.” (Falana, 2016)
Simply put, budget padding is the business-as-usual model, that enables operators to cash out from the system unnoticed.
From whichever prism you view it, Governor Umo Eno has moved to confront the monster.
Governor Eno issued these policy guidelines during the expanded State Executive Council Session to deliberate on the 2025 Appropriation Estimates on October 21, 2024.
Hear his last word on the matter of budgeting for anything.
“…I must see it, I must take responsibility for it because I am the Governor of the Akwa Ibom people. No more will people just put things in the budget and go around to say he is not releasing funds. Who sat with you to make the budget? How did you arrive at what you put in the budget? These are things we must completely eliminate. I will have the time. I am donating the time because that is why I was hired for this job, and I am going to do the job that the Akwa Ibom people sent me here to do”.
You gerrit? If you don’t gerrit, fogerrit!
