Senate to investigate Buhari’s N30trn ways and means, other spendings

By DailyTimesNGR 21 February 2024 116 No comment

By Haruna Salami

The Senate on Tuesday resolved to investigate the N30 trillion ways and means spending by the Muhammadu Buhari administration.

The Buhari administration got the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) under Mr Godwin Emefiele to print currency notes as ways and means of meeting certain financial obligations.

The decision to probe the spendings was sequel to the submission of a report by a number of the Senate joint committees.

The committees are those on Banking, Insurance and other Financial Institutions (BIOFI), Finance, National Planning, Agriculture and Appropriation.

The committees had interacted and received insights from the Federal Government’s Economic Management Team on the state of the economy.

The report was presented on behalf of the former Senate Leader, Senator Abdullahi Abubakar by Senator Tokunbo Abiru.

Debate on the report was centred on several intervention programmes and policies of the immediate past administration.

Questions were raised on how much was committed to such programmes and how effective were the intervention programmes on the economic situation of the country.

Virtually all senators that contributed lamented the appalling state of the economy and aggravated sufferings of the citizenry and the spate of insecurity in the country.

They argued that should the various intervention policies and funds allocated under Buhari were judiciously utilised, the current economic hardship would not have been so severe.

This prompted the Senate Chief Whip, Ali Ndume and a few others to call for holistic investigation of Buhari’s intervention programmes.

Ndume warned that urgent steps must be taken to stem the imminent food crisis or else government would not be able to contain the anger of the masses.

Ndume, who was part of the last Senate, observed that the Senate approved N23 trillion as ways and means, and another N819 billion as supplementary budget for Buhari in the twilight of the last administration. He however, wondered how the administration ended up with N30 trillion as ways and means.

The lawmaker said what the Senate did by approving the ways and means after the money was spent was illegal, adding that the Senate has no right to investigate after the money had been spent.

Ndume denied being part of the approval process, as many senators chorused “you were there”.

Senate President Godswill Akpabio who presided over the plenary, then sarcastically said, “Senator Ndume cannot remember being there when ways and means was approved”.

Also, the Deputy Senate President, Barau Jibrin, who was also a member of the last Senate, tried unsuccessfully to rationalise the approval of the ways and means.

Jibrin said, “Ways and means was an over draft to the Federal Government to assist the government because of certain emergency. If President Bola Tinubu….”, but Akpabio interjected him saying, “President Tinubu can’t bring this. This Senate cannot be a rubber stamp to anyone. What you did then put the country in a mess”.

Akpabio then turned to Senator Ahmed Lawan, who was President of the last Senate and under whose watch the controversial ways and means was approved.

Lawan said there was nothing the National Assembly can legislate on that it cannot investigate. He affirmed that what the last Senate approved for Buhari as ways and means was N22 trillion and additional N819 billion “for decayed infrastructure”.

The Yobe North Senator then took a swipe at the present administration, saying, “What Nigerians need today is food and security. We are the present and the present is not pleasant.”

But Akpabio retorted that the ways and means approved by Lawan was what has put the country in a mess today, describing it as expenditure without details.

On the current economic hardship, Akpabio said, “At the moment, I think we are at the threshold where nothing should be ruled out because Nigerians want food. A hungry population is an angry population and so we must do everything possible to put food on the table of Nigerians.

“I want to commend the joint committee for the fantastic job they have done for the Senate. I am sure a lot of Nigerians were not even aware that the Senate has taken proactive steps by setting up this kind of joint committee to meet with the economic management team of the Federal Government to discuss ways and means of tackling the current economic situation and particularly ensuring food security and ameliorating the suffering that Nigerians are currently going through.

“The situation is evolving on a daily basis. You can see a lot of sponsored protests here and there. But most of those people are not aware of the efforts being made by this Senate to tackle the situation together with the joint management team of the Federal Government.

“There is no father that will want to see his child sleep in the night without food. That is why we cannot limit our discussion to say we will not import food. Wherever we can find food to put on the table of Nigerians, we shall do so.

“It’s an emergency situation. Like Senator Lalong pointed out, it’s an uncommon situation which has been exacerbated by many factors from Covid-19 to insecurity, inflation, to what Senator Abiru pointed out; the ways and means expenditure of N30 trillion that has put so much pressure the CBN and left a very big gap in the financial situation such that if this government that inherited the situation tries to fill the gap it means people will not eat.”

But Deputy Senate President Jibrin tried vehemently to rationalise that what is happening in Nigeria is not in isolation, as it a global economic downturn, saying “big economies like UK is in recession.”

The Senate subsequently resolve to set up a committee to investigate how the N30 trillion ways and means and funds for other intervention programmes were spent.