Budget Padding: Group Threatens Mass Protest Against Akpabio
The allegation of budget padding levelled against the senate president Godswill Akpabio by the suspended senator representing Bauchi central Abdul Ningi has continued to elicit reactions from the countrymen.
DAYLIGHT REPORTERS reports that Ningi alleged that the senate padded the 2024 federal government’s budget by over N3.7 trillion, the matter that triggered rumbles in the red chamber of the National Assembly, leading to the senator’s suspension for three months.
In its reaction to the accusation and Ningi’s suspension, a civil society organisation known as “National Association For Peaceful Coexistence and Good Governance” has threatened to organise a massive protest against the president of the senate God’s Will Akpabio saying the padding could not be justified.
Founder of the group Comrade Isiaku Balogun Nathaniel in an interview with AIT monitored by our correspondent urged President Bola Tinubu to probe Ningi’s allegations, call the leadership of the senate to make clarification and reinstate the suspended senator within one week otherwise the group will mobilise Nigerian youth to stage massive protest in the nation’s capital.
According to him, the senators are supposed to get the sum of about N200 million each annually for constituency projects alleging however that Akpabio alone, earmarked the sum of over N20 billion for himself alone in the budget.
They said, Ningi’s revelation was in the best interest of the nation describing his suspension as a witch-hunt and unfair to his constituency “that now lacks representation in the senate”.
“We are going to mobilise ourselves in our numbers. We are approaching the national assembly; we are staging massive protest till the president deems it fit to call the senate president to order.
“We are giving them seven days notification from today (to do the needful). We are going to barricade the national assembly to call for transparency and accountability because Nigerians want to know what and what the senators are using N3.7 trillion to do”, he said.
