Presidency Smuggles ‘Doctored Budget’ Into The National Assembly

The real details of how the original copy of the 2016 Budget disappeared from the Senate has been revealed and all the people indicted in the show of shame.

Nigerians were embarrassed some days ago to realize that the 2016 Budget was missing from the Senate.

However, the Senate finally have disclosed who was responsible for the embrassment brought on the country. Making the revelation at the end of a two-hour closed-door session, Senate President Bukola Saraki announced that findings by the Ethics, Privileges and Public Petitions Committee, which investigated the allegation of missing budget, showed that Senator Ita Enang swapped the document presented by Buhari to the joint session of the National Assembly on December 22, 2015 with a “fake” copy.



Accordingly, Saraki has said the Senate resolved at the closed-door session to jettison the “fake” document submitted by Enang and concentrate only on the one presented by the president.

“We have received the report of the Committee on Ethics, Privileges and Public Petitions on investigations surrounding 2016 Appropriation Bill. Our finding is that Senator Ita Enang, the Senior Special Assistant to the President for National Assembly Matters printed copies of the 2016 Appropriation Bill and brought them to the Senate.

“We have discovered that what he brought is different from the version presented by Mr. President. We have resolved to consider only the version presented by Mr. President as soon as we receive soft copies of the original document from the executive,” Saraki said.


According to a THISDAY report, the Senate does not have the original copy of the 2016 Budget submitted by President Muhammadu Buhari at the joint session of the National Assembly last month. The report goes further to quote a source who revealed that it was only one document that was presented to the entire National Assembly by the president and not one to each of its chamber as erroneously assumed in some quarters.

According to him, the norm is that once a budget is presented before the National Assembly, it goes straight to the office of the clerk of the National Assembly who will dispatch it to both the Senate clerk and House clerk. The clerks of the two chambers would then make the documents available to the Appropriation Committees in both houses, which will in turn circulate copies among members.

The source further revealed that when Enang wanted to swap the original document, he attempted to reach the clerk of the Appropriation Committee on the phone but could not get him. He then decided to call the acting clerk of the National Assembly, Mr. Nelson Ayewoh, telling him that he had attempted to reach the Appropriation Committee’s clerk to collect a document from him.

Ayewoh, it was learnt, did not know that it was the budget document that Enang wanted to collect from the Appropriation Committee clerk when he accepted to call the latter, asking him to reach Enang who had wanted to speak with him.

Ayewoh was then said to have told the investigating committee that he did not know what Enang wanted to discuss with the Appropriation Committee clerk but only offered to show him respect by drawing his colleague’s attention to Enang’s phone call.

Adding a twist to the story, Enang while appearing before the committee set up to investigate the disappearance of the 2016 Budget denied communicating with Ayewoh and the clerk of the Appropriation Committee on the budget as he claimed never had their phone numbers.