• Says bandits may overun North
By Fred Itua, Abuja
Senator Abdul Ningi has alleged that the budget transmitted to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu was padded by N3 trillion.
According to him, the 2024 budget approved by the National Assembly was N25 trillion, but what was eventually transmitted to the presidency and being operated is N28 trillion.
Speaking on the Hausa service of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Ningi said: “This is true, 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. 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.
“This is what we intend 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.
“The action taken by ECOWAS has affected the relationship between Nigeria and Niger. There was an agreement that they would not construct a dam so that the Kainji Dam would be intact and we will give them electricity in return.
“Over one billion US dollars was spent on Mambila, BBC has reported. Where is that money? Who collected the money? We need to know and see what can be done. This Mambila is like the future of the North. Every part of the country has its hold as a symbol that will save them in the future.
“One of our weaknesses in the north is that we don’t love ourselves and our region so much that we don’t care about the future. We are just living anyhow. We just love the region in our mouths not at heart and I am seriously worried about that.”
On transferring of some departments of federal agencies to Lagos, he said: “I will speak not as a member of opposition, but as a northerner. As a northerner, I know that this is going to happen. We heard about it and we saw several examples in the past that tell us that all this is possible. But as I speak, our people, especially the leaders are yet to take any action to find the solution. That is why I am not even surprised.
“These things that are happening are of two categories. Some affect the North only, and some affect the entire country. What we are doing now as leaders of the Forum of Northerners, we are trying to address the problem or reduce its strength without allowing politics to come in.”
Speaking on security challenges in the North, he said: “These security challenges are happening in the North. There is nowhere in the South where someone will be abducted and spend seven days in custody of the abductors. Look at Katsina, Zamfara, and Benue. I am even afraid that one day we will wake up and see that states like Zamfara are been taken away from the country. It is possible going by what is happening.”