The Labour Party Candidate in the 2023 presidential election Peter Obi, said the discovery of N7 trillion insertion into the 2025 national budget by BudgiT, confirmed his long-held position that Nigeria has been turned into a crime scene.
Obi in a statement on his X platform said there is need to urgently and aggressively combat corruption, misappropriation, and fiscal recklessness to manage the nation’s resources effectively and efficiently.
He wondered how such staggering amount of money that could be invested in critical areas of development, such as health, education, and lifting people out of poverty, could be inserted into the budget for questionable projects.
“I am convinced that this figure represents only a fraction of the actual amount misappropriated,” he added.
According to him, the amount is even greater than the combined allocations to the Ministries of health, education, Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation Agriculture, ministries he described as “fundamental to national development.”
Obi noted that the Ministry of Education was allocated ₦3.52 trillion, while Ministry of Health received ₦2.48 trillion; Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation ₦260 billion, and Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security received ₦636.08 billion.
“Combined, these four ministries were allocated ₦6.896 trillion – an already inflated amount – yet still less than the ₦7 trillion dubiously inserted into the budget.
“That ₦7 trillion figure is even more than the ₦6.1 trillion allocated to national security – at a time when Nigeria is among the most terrorised nations in the world,” he stated.
The former Anambra State governor stated that this brazen impunity by the leaders is why the country cannot invest adequately in education in the face of the existence of nearly 20 million out-of-school children.
“It is the same corruption that has crippled primary healthcare, resulting in alarming levels of malnourished children.
“We face widespread hunger, yet our leaders neglect agricultural investment due to persistent mismanagement and a lack of accountability.
“The same disregard affects our capacity to fund national security effectively, or to support Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), which are vital to national growth,” he said
Obi called for fight against corruption, misappropriation, and fiscal recklessness.
“Our national resources must be transparently managed and strategically invested in key sectors – health, education, and poverty alleviation – to secure a better future for our people.
“We must turn this nation around.
A new Nigeria is POssible,” he stated.
