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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, Premium times reports.
It was gathered that 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.
An analysis by the online news medium had exposed questionable details in the budget, with the National Assembly on Tuesday suspending deliberations on the document indefinitely.
The chairman, Senate Committee on Appropriation, Danjuma Goje, (APC-Gombe State), and his House of Representatives counterpart, Abdulmumin Jibrin (APC-Kano), said the suspension was necessary to enable the National Assembly carry out “proper clean-up” of the budget.
A senior presidency official had earlier blamed “budget mafia” for the controversial contents, in reference to civil servants responsible for preparing the budget.
Another top government official was quoted as saying that most of the errors were made by “over-ambitious civil servants” in the budget office who handled the preparation of the document prior to the appointment of ministers by Mr. Buhari.
He said by the time the ministers were eventually appointed, they had no sufficient time to properly scrutinize the budget for errors, in view of the tight deadline each of the ministries got before the final presentation to the joint session of the National Assembly on December 22, 2015.