The Senate has turned down the report of its Committee on Drugs and Narcotics after it uncovered the document illegally contains N4.5 billion meant for the construction of police barracks in the 2022 budget for National Drug Law Enforcement Agency.
Presenting the report, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Drugs and Narcotic, Senator Hezekiah Dimka said his committee uncovered the anomaly in the course of scrutinizing the budget document presented to it by the Ministry of Finance and quickly raised the alarm.
According to Dimka, “we discovered N4.5 billion on line item of Police barrack in the budget presented to us .”
It was on the basis of this that the Committee on Appropriation chaired by Senator Barau Jubrin turned down the report on the budget for NDLEA and asked the Committee to go and correct the padded N4.5billion.
The N4.5 billion padding in the budget for NDLEA comes a day after the Senate Committee on Environment chaired by Senator Ike Ekweremadu uncovered a whopping N16b proposed in the 2022 Appropriation Bill for the repayment of the Nigeria Erosion and Watershed Management Project, NEWMAP.