.. says “Budget scam is national embarrassment”

Ekiti State Governor, Mr Ayodele Fayose has urged President Mohammadu
Buhari to save the country of the national embarrassment being caused
by the 2016 Budget that he presented to the National Assembly by
formally withdrawing the budget and representing it.

According to a statement issued on Tuesday by his Special Assistant on
Pubic Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka, the governor said
“the President should admit that there were avoidable errors in the
budget and since he is human and not immune to errors, he should
simply do the needful by presenting a new and credible budget to the
National Assembly.”

Governor Fayose described revelation by the Health Minister, Isaac
Adewole, that the proposal drawn up by the ministry and submitted to
the budget office had been doctored and that “foreign” appropriations,
different from what was submitted, had been sneaked in as the height
of national embarrassment.

While addressing the Senate Committee on Health during its budget
defence session on Monday, Prof Adewole had stunned the Senators when
he said; “We have to look into the details of the budget and re-submit
it to the committee. This was not what we submitted. We’ll submit
another one. We don’t want anything foreign to creep into that budget.
What we submitted is not there.”

The minister went further to say that in the revised budget as
re-submitted, N15.7 billion for capital allocation was moved to other
areas and that there was nothing allocated to public health and family
health.

In his reaction, Governor Fayose said; “Last week, we were told that
the Senate discovered a sum of N10 billion questionably smuggled into
the budget of the Ministry of Education for an allegedly questionable
subhead.

“Also, we were told of the existence of a budget mafia in the
Presidency that was said to be responsible for the embarrassing
allocations in the budget.

“Before now, we were told that a total of N3.87 billion was allocated
for capital projects at the State House Clinic alone, over N700
million more than capital allocation to all the 16 federal teaching
hospitals combined.

“Now, a whole minister has come out to say that budgetary provision
for his ministry was forged!

“If under a President that says he is fighting corruption, the budget
of the country got missing and we are now being told that the budget
being considered by the National Assembly has been forged, one cannot
but be afraid that there is possibility of Nigeria being forged one day, after the original must have gone missing.”