2024 budget: Where is N3trn – Northern Senators demand answers from Tinubu, Akpabio

The Northern Senators Forum (NSF) has claimed that its auditors have uncovered a N3 trillion increase in the N28 trillion 2024 budget signed by President Bola Tinubu.

They are demanding an explanation for the increase, amid claims that the budget is skewed against the north in particular.

The chairman of the forum, Abdul Ningi (PDP, Bauchi Central), stated this during an interview aired on the BBC Hausa Service on Saturday.

Ningi said, “For the past three months, we have engaged consultants to review the budget for us. We have some experts who are working on it line by line.

“We have seen the huge damage that was done not only to the north but to 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.”

Speaking about the revelations made by the consultants, Ningi noted: “For example, it was said that there was a budget of N28 trillion, but what was passed was N25trillion. 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.”