Abdul Ningi, the ex-senator who formerly represented Bauchi central senatorial district, has asserted the existence of an alternative budget distinct from the one officially approved on the floor of the National Assembly.
According to Ningi, experts are currently scrutinizing the budget, and a detailed report will be submitted to President Bola Tinubu to determine whether he was aware of the disparities.
In an interview with BBC on Saturday, Ningi, serving as a guest, expressed his concerns, highlighting the dissatisfaction of the Northern elite with the current government, emphasizing that the North has felt neglected.
He said, “This is true (about the review of the government) for the past three months, we have engaged consultants to review the budget for us.
“We have some experts that are working on it line by line. We have seen the huge damage that was done not only to the north but the entire country in that budget. We are supposed to sit with the Senate President to inform him about what we have observed.
“We want to show him what we have seen in the budget that is not acceptable, we will not accept them and we don’t want the country to continue spending money on those things. Apart from what the National Assembly did on the floor, there was another budget that was done underground which we didn’t know.
“The new things we have discovered in the budget were not known to us. We haven’t seen them in the budget that was debated and considered on the floor of the National Assembly.”
Shedding more light on the discoveries on the budget, Ningi said there was a difference of N3 trillion between the budget passed.
The ex-senator said, “For example, it was said that there was a budget of N28 trillion but what was passed was N25 trillion. So there is N3 trillion on top.
“Where are they, where is it going? So, we need to know this. There are a lot of things. We are coming up with a report and we will show the president himself and ask him if he is aware or not.”
Speaking further, he decried the neglect of some giants projects in the North.
“This is what we intended to do. We are to meet the president. We will talk to him about the Mambila power project, Ajaokuta and the River Niger dredging. We will talk to him about the Niger Republic. Recently, they said they will construct a dam, this is not good for us,” he added.
