N206bn in humanitarian affairs ministry’s budget wrongly coded – Minister

Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, has said the N206 billion captured in the ministry of humanitarian affairs’ 2023 budget proposal was wrongly coded by the Budget Office.

The special adviser, media & communications, ministry of finance, Yunusa Abdullahi, quoted the minister to have said this on Tuesday at a meeting with the house committee on appropriation.

Ahmed, who dismissed the budget padding allegation, explained that the N206 billion was an oversight.

The minister said the N206 billion was for the national social safety nets project funded by the World Bank and domiciled in the humanitarian ministry.

She noted that the wrong coding resulted in the item being wrongly captured as “purchase of security equipment” and had nothing to do with budget padding but an oversight.

According to her, 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.

She disclosed that the ministry of defence, ministry of power, among others, also committed the same error.

Ahmed, however, called for collaboration among ministries, departments and agencies to forestall such oversight.