Budget padding: Finance Minister exonerates Humanitarian Affairs, Defence counterparts

JONAS EZIEKE, Abuja

Minister of Finance Budget and National Planning Dr. Zainab Ahmed on Tuesday exonerated the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs Disaster Management and Social Development Ms. Sadiya Umar Farouq and  Maj-General Bashir Magashi (rtd) for allegedly inflating their respective ministries’ 2023 Budgets for National Social Safety Nets projects and Procurement of Military Equipment.

Ahmed gave the top government officials a clean bill of health when she appeared before the House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations

She had given a very convincing explanation to the House Committee on the N206, 243,305,000 earmarked by the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs as National Social Safety Nets projects and the $1,303,880.40 by the Ministers.

According to her, the approval of the said funds was done by the Ministry of Finance and the issue under contention is the expenditure on bilateral loans by the newest ministry.

She explained that the National Social Safety Nets project is domiciled in the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development and the World Bank is the source of the funds to the tune of $473,500000.

She told the lawmakers that traditionally, multilateral and bilateral financial institutions are the financiers of government loans to finance any such projects adding that the ministry’s budget was contained in the Medium Term Expenditure Framework MTET.

On the Budget of the Ministry of Defence, she said that the Minister of Defence Maj-Gen Bashir Magashi (rtd) wrote to the Presidency and got its approval for the implementation of its procurement projects in 3 phases.

She told the lawmakers that the procurement of RF-5/7800 Military Communications Equipment at the cost of N8,500,000,000 was done by the Minster in accordance with the procurement laws.

But the Committee Chairman Hon. Aliyu Betara said that the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development should resign if she is not capable to hold that office.

He said that the lawmakers had been at the reviewing end of the allegation of padding the budget and the Minister had been going to the public with a lot of misinformation.

However, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry Mr. Nasir Sanni Gwazo said that the Minister’s absence at the parley was due to an urgent national engagement by her office.

He told the lawmakers that the issue under probe by the House Committee was misrepresented by the media from all indications.