Senator Abdul Ningi, who represents Bauchi Central under the banner of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has issued a challenge to Senate President Godswill Akpabio regarding the transparency of his monthly earnings.
During his defense of the budget padding allegation on the Senate floor on Tuesday, Ningi, who serves as the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Population and leads the Northern Senators Forum, questioned the clarity of Akpabio’s take-home pay.
Despite initially intending to present his case on the alleged padding of the 2024 budget by N3.7 trillion, Ningi diverged to express uncertainty about the monthly earnings of Akpabio and other principal officers.
He said: “We discovered, that some senatorial districts in this document have up to N120 billion and my senatorial district has just N1.2 billion.
“Mr President in this budget presented to you, I have facts, constituency by constituency. Some N120 billion, some N50 billion; some N30 billion. Some have less than N1 billion.
“Mr President as I speak to you, I don’t know your take-home pay, you know my own. I don’t know the take-home pay of any of the other principal officers.
“My President, I know within budgetary provisions, you made available funds for the purchase of cars. Mr President, I don’t know how much you made for your cars and principal officers. I know how much was made for individual senator’s cars.
“As I speak to you, people are calling me names, I didn’t receive a single car.
“All within the budget provisions, Mr President, I have as a matter of fact, five aides just like other senators but I don’t know how many aides you have or the how many the Deputy Senate President has.”
