Humanitarian minister accuses Zainab Ahmed of padding the budget with N206 billion

Sadiya Farouq, the minister of humanitarian affairs, disaster preparedness, and social development, has accused Zainab Ahmed, the minister of finance, of increasing the budget for the humanitarian ministry by N206 billion.

The ministry requested some projects for the North East Development Commission and the National Social Safety Net Project in the 2022 budget, which were not released, according to Farouq, who testified before the Senate Committee on Special Duties on Monday to defend the 2023 budget. Farouq claimed that the ministry was surprised to see an inflated amount in the 2023 budget of the ministry.

Things took a turn for the worst during the budget defense when Senator Elisha Abbo (APC Adamawa North), one of the committee members, questioned the minister about the inflated N206 billion in the budget.

“Yes, we mentioned the projects for 2022 that were not announced, and part of them was for the NEDC,” the minister responded.

“The money was not released, and now that we have observed it repeating by almost a factor of ten, we are also going to ask the Ministry of Finance for clarification to understand why the increase took place despite the fact that the money requested for the projects the previous year wasn’t released.
We will thus obtain the information and subsequently deliver it to you.

The minister’s announcement shocked Abbo, who said, “This is serious. For our children to come and pay without investing in what they will see, we cannot keep borrowing money and bankrupt our nation.

Senator Yusuf Yusuf, the chairman of the committee, made a proposal to call the finance minister in to explain the N206 billion that was put into the budget.

The finance minister has already been charged with slipping money into the budget, according to other ministries.

A total of 11 billion dollars were added to the Senate’s 2023 budget, the defense minister and the minister of health both testified to the Senate on Thursday.

Punch