Senator Babafemi Ojudu Narrates How Our Budget Was Padded Under Jonathan.

Senator Babafemi Ojudu Narrates How Our Budget Was Padded Under Jonathan.
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"In my state in 2013, they budgeted for the construction of five roads in Ekiti State and I picked up the budget, looked at the details. How could you say you are building a road in Kebbi, a town in Nasarawa State and you put it in Ekiti State? Apparently some groups were playing games in the ministry of works. And I shouted and cried out to the minister that, “This is wrong! This is theft!” They called me in and tried to pacify me but I said, “No. What you should do is, if there are roads to be constructed in Ekiti, construct them in Ekiti. If there are no roads to be constructed in Ekiti, remove these items from the budget.”
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"Severally things like that happened under the previous administration and had been happening, at all levels of the preparation, presentation and approval of the budget. So, the President is saying this is not going to happen. People involved are not yet used to this new way. They are still fighting. They are still kicking and they have their plans. May be you want to tell somebody with building in Dubai that he wants to complete based on what he is going to make from this budget. Everybody who is involved is angry. That is why you are seeing these. If they absorb this new system of doing things this year, seamlessly, the budget will be passed next year without any controversy because they would have been used to this new system. So, the fact that this controversy itself is coming out is to show that there is a change in place.
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"Under previous governments, the budget would go through the ministries and the budget office padded, then to the National Assembly and the National Assembly would also add its own padding. They would give the highlights of the budget to the president and he signed. As he was signing, they were adding more to it, and there were billions of naira free out there for people to share.
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"But this President is saying, “No way. Whatever leaves my ministry and passed to the budget office must be the one that gets to the National Assembly and must be the one that comes to me fully without any padding before I sign.” That is change for you.
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"It is going to be tough for you to have said there is no way any longer for people who have made a career of padding budgets, taking money out of the system and putting it into their pockets building all kinds of mansions, transferring abroad to all sorts of things. But this man said, “This is not going to happen.
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"I will give you an instance, in one of the key ministries, a businessman came with a bogus bill owed by that ministry and went to the minister and said, “look, they are owing me two billion naira. I want you to help me make provision for it in the budget so that I can collect my money.”
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The minister said, “I do not know about this debt. We want to do things for people with this budget.” And the man left, went to some elements in the budget office and got them to agree to pad the budget with that two billion naira (those elements have been fired now).
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"So, when the minister now appeared before the relevant committee in the Senate and found out that two billion naira had been brought into his budget, he said, “look, I am not going to take this. This is not my budget. We are going to withdraw this and I will come and show you what we sent to the budget office and what was sent to the National Assembly.
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"In the past, it would have been allowed. So, the man who went to where they padded the thing would have promised to let go with some millions of naira.
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"When I was in the Senate (under Jonathan) I kept shouting, pointing out some of these paddings but nobody listened to me then. They were even faking so much that they would go and revive some of the dead agencies of government and they would allocate billions of naira to those agencies. One way or the other, money would be taken out based on that."
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Senator Babafemi Ojudu was in the 7th Senate, but now the Special Adviser to President Muhammadu
Buhari on Political Matters.