The story in a national daily alleging budget padding entitled ‘Finance Ministry on the spot over N424bn ‘padding’ is fabricated and misleading, because the said insertions allocated to the said items and sources in the budget proposal is also unfounded.
The project was correctly described in the submission from International Economic Relations Department for the 2023 budget. But, unfortunately, a wrong code was selected from the drop down menu which resulted in a wrong description of the project which resulted in it being captured as ‘Purchase of The funds are drawn by the beneficiary Ministries under the terms of the agreements, and the financial institutions disburse directly to service providers. There were ample opportunities to review details for observations by Ministries and corrections made by the Budget Office of the Federation .
This administration has undeniably been highly committed to budget transparency, having undertaken various reforms in the public finance management space which have culminated in the significant recorded improvements. The Honourable Minister of Defence wrote to Mr. President requesting the approval and release of $1,363,880.40 and N158,928,045.37 for the implementation of Phase 1 of the project. He also requested that the sums of $12,274,923.60 and N11,946,311,375.18 will be required to implement Phases 2 and 3 of the project, which Mr. President graciously approved. 50% of the requirement for Phases 2 & 3 , amounting to N8,600,000,000, has been included in the 2023 budget proposal of the MoD.