"In the revised budget as re-submitted, N15.7 billion for capital allocation had been moved to other areas. Some allocations made are not in keeping with our policies. There is nothing allocated to public health and family health. Over the last two years, nothing has been done on HIV." " We have to look into the details of the budget and re-submit it to the committee. This is not what we submitted. We'll submit another one . We don't want anything foreign to creep into that budget. What we submitted is not there. We have not reached that stage and we find the money there", were the very words of Prof. Isaac Adewole, the Minister of Health while appearing before the Senate to defend his ministry's budget for 2016.

Prof Adewole is a high ranking minister and a big member of the Buhari kitchen cabinet . If he could publicly and categorically disown the budget of his ministry during his defence , then the Presidency is surely hiding lots of secrets from Nigerians.

Firstly President Buhari presented a budget that deeply relied on extensive borrowing to be implemented and then suddenly the Senate President publicly announced that the copy of the Budget with the senate was missing . The Special Adviser to the president, Senator Ita Enang was accused of the stealing and he never denied it , all he did was give excuses that he had to get approval from his boss before he confirming or debunking the rumours.

While this was ongoing , the same federal government applied successful for a loan running into billions of U.S dollars to finance the budget. Then the last but not the least is the discrepancy in the budget between the minister's copy and the one with the senate.

Who did the budgeting and where did the new figures denied by the minister come from? How come no one knows how it came about? Wasn't the minister the one that submitted his ministry's budget proposal? Who had been with the old and new budget and who has been tampering with them? There are certainly several questions than answers this time and this clearly shows how corruption has eaten deep into this regime.

How come a national priority and property like the budget which forms the foundation in which all economic, health, educational and a host of other plans and policies are tailored and implemented is suddenly having different copies and figures that are too different to be similar? What sort of laxity is been exhibited and why is the Presidency keeping mute. A national budget where the budgets of the ministries of Agriculture, Transport, Labour and Employment and Science and Technology even when joined together are not even up to that of Information is a budget based on "Advanced Formal Fraud". How can an administration claim to create employment yet the sectors that provide the highest aggregate employment are croweded out by the likes of Information .

This is a budget where 90% of capital projects are going to be financed from borrowed funds. Who will make sure every kobo is accounted for as it is easier to loot funds made for capital than the recurrent expenditure. Even the oil benchmark used in preparing the budget have proved to be unrealistic given that the budget benchmark is less than the actual international crude oil price. So how can these projects be funded ?

If the minister can't recognise his budget then if passed who takes over the implementation and when it fails or succeeds who takes the loss and praise.

It is clear President Buhari is showing himself to be as unclean as those before him and what compounds the pain is his total disrespect for the Nigerian citizens as he doesn't let go any opportunity to tongue lash them locally and internationally.

Buhari has shown himself to be a man of so many words and little action and it is on this note that the National Assembly should be praised and commended for suspending the passing of the budget indefinitely .

Nigerians have suddenly realised with recent trends that the country on another ride to "Corruption and Fraud".

Source

Mailtelegraph..com