Senator Diket Plang of the APC representing Plateau Central has clarified that the National Assembly did not engage in budget padding for the 2024 budget.
Speaking to journalists in Jos on Monday, Plang, who is a member of the Senate appropriation committee, explained that the National Assembly passed a budget of N28.77 trillion. He further noted that President Bola Tinubu presented a budget of N27.2 trillion to the joint session of the National Assembly on November 29, 2023. Plang mentioned that upon the executive’s request, the National Assembly made an addition of about 1.5 trillion, bringing the total budget to N28.77 trillion.
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“On the request by the executive, we added the said sum because of critical issues such as food security. Hunger had come in as a result of fuel subsidy removal and devaluation of the naira and there was a need for some measures.
“They were not in the initial budget. There was an urgent need to provide additional money for the security agencies to enable them to purchase weapons.
“There are classified expenditures like those for the security agencies that are not captured in the printed budget,’’ he said.
Plang stated that the 10th National Assembly was lucky to be working with President Bola Tinubu, who knows the workings of the legislature, having been a former senator.
He said that the vice president, the chief of staff, the secretary to the government of the federation, and the president’s wife were among the former lawmakers who populated the executive arm.
“Because the executive knows what the National Assembly wants and how to make laws, there is a friendly working relationship between the two arms of government,” he stated.
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