The last is yet to be heard of the alleged N206 billion naira budget padding scandal rocking the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs as the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs. Zainab Ahmed accused the Budget Office of the Federation of erroneously inserting the figure.
The Minister of Finance disclosed this in a statement signed by her Special Adviser, Media and communications, Yunusa Tanko and made available to Channel Network Afrique, CNA said the N206 billion captured in the budget proposal of the ministry was wrongly coded by the Budget Office.
She said the N206 billion insertion which has generated serious reaction was for the National Social Safety Nets Project funded by the World Bank and domiciled in the Humanitarian Ministry.
Mrs Zainab noted that the wrong coding resulted in the item being wrongly captured as ‘purchase of security equipment’ but that it has nothing to do with Budget padding, but an oversight adding that the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management should have called the attention of the budget office to the anomaly like her counterparts in other ministries.
The Minister of Finance also said the error was not peculiar to the Ministry of Humanitarian as that of Defence, Federal Minsitry of Power, among others, also committed same error.
She however, called for collaboration among Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of the government in a bid to forestall such oversight.