Forgery Allegation: Fayose challenges Buhari to withdraw budget

The governor of Ekiti State, Mr Ayodele Fayose has counseled President Mohammadu Buhari to withdraw and re-present the 2016 budget in order to save the country from national embarrassment.

The governor, in a statement issued on Tuesday by his Special Assistant on Pubic Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka, said “the President should admit that there were avoidable errors in the budget and since he is human and not immune to errors, he should simply do the needful by presenting a new and credible budget to the National Assembly.”

According to Governor Fayose, it was the height of national embarrassment for the  Health Minister, Prof Isaac Adewole, to state that the proposal drawn up by the ministry and submitted to the budget office had been doctored and that “foreign” appropriations, different from what was submitted, had been sneaked in.

It will be recalled the health minister, during his budget defence before the Senate Committee on Health said “We have to look into the details of the budget and re-submit it to the committee. This was 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.”

Reacting to the statement of the minister,  Governor Fayose said: “Last week, we were told that the Senate discovered a sum of N10 billion questionably smuggled into the budget of the Ministry of Education for an allegedly questionable subhead.

“Also, we were told of the existence of a budget mafia in the Presidency that was said to be responsible for the embarrassing allocations in the budget.

“Before now, we were told that a total of N3.87 billion was allocated for capital projects at the State House Clinic alone, over N700 million more than capital allocation to all the 16 federal teaching hospitals combined.

“Now, a whole minister has come out to say that budgetary provision for his ministry was forged!

“If under a President that says he is fighting corruption, the budget of the country got missing and we are now being told that the budget being considered by the National Assembly has been forged, one cannot but be afraid that there is possibility of Nigeria being forged one day, after the original must have gone missing.”

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