Padding resurrects in 2017 budget as Fashola rejects N2bn insertion

The illegal insertion of items into the appropriation bill, referred to as padding by many Nigerians, may have reared its ugly head again in 2017 budget.

Minister of Works, Power and Housing, Babatunde Raji Fashola, on Tuesday rejected N2billion allegedly voted for Regional Housing Scheme, in his ministry’s budget.

The alleged sum is said to have been voted by the Ministry of Finance out of the N64.991billioin budgetary proposals for the housing sector this year.

The denial of the huge sum of insertion by the minister, who appeared before the Senate Committee on Land, Housing and Urban Development, led by Senator Barnabas Gemade, to defend the 2017 Budget, shocked the senators.

Fashola disowned the vote and alleged that the Ministry of Finance planted it into the 2017 budgetary profile of the Ministry of Housing as its own initiative tagged: Regional Housing Scheme.

The minister however urged the committee to add N6billion to the total budget estimate of the Ministry as an appropriated vote for payment of the $11.9million Nigeria is owing Shelter Afrik, a Housing Development and Financing Organisation which has in its membership, 44 African Countries.

He added that as one who presently heads the governing board of the organisation on the slot of Nigeria, indebted nations like Nigeria were set to be expelled from the organisation if by the end of this year, they fail to pay up their dues.

The denial of the N2billion allegedly voted for Regional Housing Scheme, followed Senator Gemade’s inquiry to know how they came about the regional housing scheme.

In his response Fashola said, “I know as much of it as you do because it is not our initiative”.

Read also: Ballot boxes for 2019 elections to gulp N1.4bn –INEC boss

Sequel to this denial, Gemade instructed the committee clerk to do a letter to the Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun to appear before it for explanation on the questionable vote and also to let the committee know what she understands about the allocation of N2billion which Fashola disowned.

A similar situation also played out involving the 2016 budget submitted by the current administration when, the Health Minister, Isaac Adewole, disowned the budget proposal submitted on its behalf by the Ministry of Budget and National Planning.

“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,” Adewole had then said.

The 2016 budget was replete with stories of all manner of criminal insertions which led to a claim of the budget missing at a point and had to be a re-submitted by the Presidency.

 

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