Its Official! President Buhari Orders Probe of the Fraud in the Controversial 2016 National Budget

According to a senior government official who exclusively disclosed to Premium Times, President Muhammadu Buhari has ordered an immediate investigation into allegations of fraudulent padding of allocations in the 2016 budget, with strict orders that all cases of discrepancies, errors and ambiguities be resolved promptly.

It can be recalled that an extensive analysis of the budget exposed questionable details from the budget, with the National Assembly on Tuesday, suspending deliberations on the document indefinitely.


The chairman, Senate Committee on Appropriation, Danjuma Goje and his House of Representatives counterpart, Abdulmumin Jibrin, said the suspension was necessary to enable the National Assembly carry out 'proper clean-up' of the budget.

The senior presidency official said to enable the budget to be cleaned up of all the controversial allocations, a high-powered panel had been constituted with a mandate to investigate all observations and concerns by individuals, media and agencies, particularly the National Assembly.

"The presidency has ordered the immediate investigation of all the allegations and issues, particularly on padding, raised by the National Assembly on various ministries, departments and agencies of government.

"The investigative panel is expected to critically look into the budget item-by-item, incident-by-incident, with particular attention to the reactions from the National Assembly, ministries, media, civil society groups or indeed anybody that raised concerns regarding the padding of the budget.

"All corrections would be made to ensure that the budget was passed as soon as possible. I assure you government is working cautiously on the corrections with the intention of correcting any error or malfeasance spotted in the 2016 Appropriation Bill. If there is any error whatsoever, it is being sorted out straight away," the official added.