The Northern Senators’ Forum led by Abdul Ningi has kicked against the 2024 budget describing as fraudulent and totally anti-North.
He noted that the group observed discrepancies between what was agreed by the lawmakers and what was eventually passed.
He stated this in an interview with BBC Hausa Service on Saturday.
According to Senator Ningi, for the past three months, the Northern Senators have engaged consultants to review the figures for them as members of the Northern Senators Forum.
According to him, “We have some experts that are working on it line by line. We have seen the huge damage that was done not only to the North but the entire country in that budget. We are supposed to sit with the Senate President to inform him about what we have observed.
“We want to show him what we have seen in the budget that is not acceptable, we will not accept them and we don’t want the country to continue spending money on those things. Apart from what the National Assembly did on the floor, there was another budget that was done underground, which we didn’t know.
“The new things we have discovered in the budget were not known to us. We haven’t seen them in the budget that was debated and considered on the floor of the National Assembly,” Ningi said, adding that there was a budget of N28 trillion but that what was officially passed by the National Assembly was N25 trillion.
“So there is N3 trillion on top. Where are they, where is it going? So, we need to know this. There are a lot of things. We are coming up with a report and we will show the president himself and ask him if he is aware or not.
Speaking bout other matters that are giving the Northern region cause for concern, Senator Abdul Ningi said, “This is what we intended to do. We are to meet the president. We will talk to him about the Mambilla power project, Ajaokuta and the River Niger dredging. We will talk to him about the Niger Republic. Recently, they said they will construct a dam, this is not good for us,” Ningi said, adding that the action taken by ECOWAS has affected the relationship between Nigeria and Niger.
“There was an agreement that they would not construct a dam so that the Kainji Dam would be intact and we would give them electricity in return.
“Over one billion US dollars was spent on Mambila, BBC has reported. Where is that money? Who collected the money? We need to know and see what can be done. This Mambila is like the future of the North. Every part of the country has its holds as a symbol that will save them in the future.
“One of our weaknesses in the north is that we don’t love ourselves and our region so much that we don’t care about the future. We are just living anyhow. We just love the region in our mouths not at heart and I am seriously worried about that,” Ningi said, adding that the security challenges in the North are worrying.
“There is nowhere in the South where someone will be abducted and spend seven days in custody of the abductors. Look at Katsina, Zamfara, and Benue. I am even afraid that one day we’ll wake up and see that states like Zamfara have been taken away from the country. It is possible to go by what is happening,” Ningi added.