The National Assembly and the Presidency may be on a collision course if revelations made by the Senior Special Assistant (SSA) to the President on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are anything to go by.
The Office of the SSA on SDGs had proposed a N40billion budget for the year 2020. However, in its budget submitted to the National Assembly recently, an additional, unexplainable N33billion was added, making the votes for the SDGs to balloon to N77billion.
When the Senior Special Assistant (SSA) to the President on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Adejoke Orelope-Adefulire was invited by the Legislature, she could hardly explain the new addition.
The president’s assistant said, simply “this was how it came from the Presidency.”
Quick News Africa understands that the Presidency is worried over the disturbing scandal, as members of the relevant committees in the House of Representatives and Senate have demanded for an explanation over the ‘bizarre padding’ of the SDG office’s allocation.
Already the two chambers of the National Assembly have directed the Finance and Budget Minister Zainab Shamsuna Ahmed to withhold allocations to the office until the 2020 budget details – including the suspicious N33billion – are convincingly provided.
“It was this strange inclusion (N33bn) that made us to demand the details of the budget of the SDGs. We have received allegations of duplication of projects since 2018.
“But it has been a ding-dong game between the Office of the SDGs and the Senate and House committees. We want the Executive to pay more attention to this N33billion. We want to know how it came about.
“Faced with the timeline for the passage of the Appropriation Bill, we reached an agreement with her to pass the budget and get the breakdown later. Surprisingly, she has been evading the two committees. There are text messages she sent which we can show as evidence,” a lawmaker was quoted to have said.
