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Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has lent his voice to the ongoing saga on alleged padding of the 2016 budget in the House of Reps.
Obasanjo spoke with State House correspondents shortly after meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
The former president said the ongoing revelation on budget padding in the National Assembly only confirmed his earlier position that lawmakers are “armed robbers and rogues.”
He said he was sure that those who did not believe him when he made his first statement would now do so with the fresh revelation.
Recall that in 2012, Obasanjo described the National Assembly and state Houses of Assembly as institutions filled with “rogues and armed robbers” at an event in Lagos attended by two former heads of state, Yakubu Gowon and Ernest Shonekan.
The sacked chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations, Abdulmumin Jibrin, had revealed that N284 billion constituency projects was allegedly smuggled into the 2016 budget.
According to Jibrin, who was recently sacked from his position by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, 10 standing committees inserted the projects into the budget without the knowledge of their members.
He said he was sacked because he blocked some shady moves of some lawmakers, regarding the budget.
READ: Budget Padding Scandal:How N284bn was smuggled into budget, sacked lawmaker, Jibrin, reveals
In Obasanjo’s words, the best way out of the current mess was to ensure that only men of integrity are elected into the National Assembly.