The Chief Whip of the Senate, Senator Ali Ndume, has said that he warned Senator Abdul Ningi on his allegation that the 2024 budget was padded by over N3 trillion, but he did not listen.
Ndume made this known during an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today recently.
Ndume said: “I sat next to the Senate Leader (Opeyemi Bamidele), he was very angry about what Ningi did, but honestly me too. What he (Ningi) did was wrong because I was involved.
“In the first instance, it started when they said capital project was skewed to the South. The total in that budget that was brought before us by the President was not up to N9 trillion, it was N8.9trn and they are talking of skewed capital project to the South and the total adding up to N15 trillion.
“That N15 trillion is strange, even with the amendment that we made, the capital component of this budget is not up to that.
“I told him he was wrong. I had even warned him when he brought the issue to me. I had told him to get a consultant to analyze the budget. But he refused to listen to me.”
Ndume added that Ningi was trying to make the 2024 project an ethnic and political issue, which is not right.
Ndume made it known that when Ningi first told him about the case, he told him to provide evidence, which he could not and stated further that as a senior member of the Senate, he (Ndume) can testify to the fact that the North was not shortchanged by the South in the budget, as Ningi claimed.
