Nathaniel Zacchaeus, Abuja
The Senate Committee on Appropriation on Monday cleared the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs Zainab Ahmed, over her alleged insertions of huge sums in budgetary provisions of some Ministries, Departments, and Agencies ( MDAs).

The panel, however, condemned the alleged shoddy implementation of the National Social Investment Programme (NSIP) based on the lack of records of verifiable beneficiaries.

The Finance Minister got her clearance on the alleged series of paddings in the proposed N20.51trn 2023 budget when she appeared before the Senate committee to make clarifications on the alleged insertions.

She expressed shock to the committee that some heads of agencies feigned ignorance of the sum in their budget during their interface with relevant committees for budget defence.

She explained that money was approved by the Federal Executive Council (FEC), before the budget presentation itself by President Muhammadu Buhari on October 7, 2022.

She said, “All the proposed budgetary sums like the N206billion in the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, the N8.6bn in the Ministry of Defence, N195.468bn in the estimates for the Ministry of Power, etc, were all captured before the presentation by Mr President.

“Most of these sums are bilateral or multilateral loans captured in the budget of agencies selected for project execution for the sole purpose of transparency.

“The totality of such loans captured in the proposed budget of the relevant agencies is N1.771trn. If the heads of the affected MDAs had carried out thorough scrutinisation of their approved budgetary proposals, the issue of insertion or budget padding wouldn’t have arisen at all.

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“In fact after realisation of their mistakes, one of the ministers,  the Minister of Defence , Bashir Magashi have to apologise after feigning ignorance of N8.6bn in his Ministry’s budget during an interface with Senate Committee on Defence “, she said.

The Chairman of the Committee, Senator Jibrin Barau ( APC Kano North), expressed satisfaction with her submissions.

Barau said the clarifications made by the Minister were well understood by all the committee members and commended her for ensuring transparency in capturing such loans or grants in the national budget.

Earlier at an interface with the Senate Ad – hoc committee on uneven disbursement of N500bn Development fund by the Development Bank of Nigeria (DBN), the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Sadiya Farouq, failed to supply the committee with verifiable evidence of beneficiaries of various intervention programmes of the ministry.

She said about 9.8 million pupils nationwide are already benefiting from the School feeding programme at the rate of N100 per meal, aside from beneficiaries of other clusters of the programme.

But the Chairman of the Committee, Senator Sani Musa, and other members like Ayo Akinyekure, Uche Ekwunife, and Mathew Urhoghide, among others, told the Minister that her presentation and that of the Coordinator of the programme, Dr Umar Bindir, were “beautiful on paper but lacked substance”

They described the implementation of the programme as a nullity.

The Committee consequently directed her to furnish it with names of beneficiaries of different clusters of the programme, their contact address, and telephone numbers based on states, local government, and wards within the week.

The minister promised the committee that all the information would be provided but cautioned that the ministry believes in the policy of confidentiality and would not allow the details of the beneficiaries to go public.