Oct 1 spendings: el-Rufai lied – Jonathan

FORMERPresident Goodluck Jonathan yesterday dismissed allegations from Kaduna State Governor, Nasir el-Rufai that his government blew a whop­ping N64 billion on October 1 independence anniversary celebrations between 2011 and 2014.
He said only N332.6 million was spent on anniversary cel­ebrations from 2012 to 2014. He did not give any spending detail for 2011.
Jonathan who spoke through his former minister and deputy chairman of the Ministry of National Planning, Dr. Abuba­kar Olanrewaju Sulaiman, equally challenged the office of Sectetary to the Government of the Federation to publish the details.
On October 1, in a post on his Facebook page, el-Rufai gave the breakdown of the spend­ings on the independence an­niversaries in the last five years as follows: 2011 – N13 billion, 2012 – N15 billion, 2013 – N14 billion and 2014 – N22 billion.
The former president reiter­ated in a statement yesterday urged Nigerians not to believe el-Rufai, adding that he has a penchant for lying.
“We were taken aback by the recent comment report­edly credited to His Excellency, Governor Nasir El-rufai where he claimed the immediate past President, His Excellency, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan’s ad­ministration spent N64 billion to cover the country’s indepen­dence anniversary spending in five years.
“The breakdown, according to the governor showed that N13 billion was spent in 2011, N15 billion in 2012 and N14 billion in 2013 and N22 billion alleg­edly spent in 2014.
“This tissue of lies was con­tained on his facebook comment on Thursday. Ordinarily, we would have allowed this to go as just ranting of a favour seek­er, but for the sake of ordinary Nigerians who were abreast of happenings under the adminis­tration and also those who never did, we will like to set the record straight. It is important to cor­rect the misinformation so that the unsuspecting public would not be misled.
“For the record, a breakdown of our anniversary spending between 2012 to 2014 amount­ed to N332.6 million. We chal­lenge the Office of the Govern­ment of the Federation (OSGF) to publish these details for the consumption of the public.
“For the record, a breakdown of our spending for this event between 2012 and 2104 goes thus; 2012- N107.6 million; 2013- N45 million and 2014 had N180 million. So, the question here is where did the billions as claimed by el-rufai emanate from? Even though that of 2010 and 2011 are not handy now, but it should be known that they all fall within the same bracket as the one stated, except that the 2010 anniversary was a golden one when the country marked her 50 years of independence. But even then, not such outra­geous sum was either budgeted or expended .
“Again, it is germane to ex­plain the increase in the 2013 anniversary spending for the purpose of accountability. The National Honours Award In­vestiture was incorporated into the celebration, thus mak­ing it two events in one, hence the N174,800,000.00 budget. We also want to add that the said award investiture could not hold in 2013 and the approved budget rolled over and was utilized to organise the investiture in 2014.
“It is high time government functionaries desisted from abusing their immunity by de­stroying history and trading on lies just to gain cheap popularity or curry one favour or the other from certain quarters.
“Perhaps (former) President Olusegun Obasanjo was right in his assessment of el-Rufai when he said in his latest memoir,My Watchthat his vivid recollection of him (el-Rufai) is his penchant for lying, for unfair embellish­ment of stories and his inabil­ity to sustain loyalty for long. That exactly is what el-Rufai has done with his ungodly fab­rication of lies against Jonathan government.
“One hopes that President Buhari would be on guard against being misled by the likes of el-Rufai who are hell bent on misinforming the Nigerian pub­lic.”
In a related development, Budgit, a civic/technology non-governmental organisation which helps citizens understand the Nigerian budget and finan­cial management of different arms of government, gave an­other dimension to the budget controversy.
Budgit announced that its in­vestigation revealed that for the 2010 anniversary celebration, which incidentally was Nige­ria’s 50th anniversary, Jona­than’s government spent N1.7 billion. On its twitter handle (@BudgITng) on Saturday, the organisation said: “We have rigorously checked 2010-2015 budget and the only allocation found was N1.7 billion meant for 2010 independence Day, which was the 50th anniversary celebration.”