NewsRescue
Following a damning exposure summary report by PremiumTimes, President Muhammadu Buhari has ordered a probe of fraudulent padding of allocations in his 2016 budget.
Fraudulent inclusions that got media attention included the construction of single boreholes for a whopping N140 million, $700,000 by minister of power, Tunde Fashola.
The budget is to be scanned and all crap found removed with strict orders that all cases of discrepancies, errors and ambiguities be resolved promptly, before it is resubmitted.
What is sad is that the first time the budget was submitted and the media described a few frivolous figures, the Buhari administration snook the budget out and corrected those ones the media mentioned and returned it. This was the time of the story of the missing budget. But they were not honest because all they looked at was what the media had commented on.
Now that the media commented on some more things, they will only change these again and resubmit, not trying to do a honest job but only trying as it seems to satisfy the media.
The media reports that triggered a rejection of the budget was only a summarily report that hurriedly mentioned only about 8 fraudulent items of hundreds of excesses and frauds in the entire budget.
Whether all corruption and frivolities in the budget will be corrected in the best interests of Nigeria in these trying times is left to be seen.
