By George Mgbeleke<\/p>\n
The controversial allocation of N1.3 billion to a non-existent Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC) in the 2026 budget dominated discussions on Monday at the Senate Press Corps (SPC) Capacity-Building Workshop in Abuja, as stakeholders called for stronger legislative oversight and media collaboration to safeguard the national budget.<\/p>\n
The workshop, held at Hearing Room 231, National Assembly Complex, with the theme *\u201cLeveraging Legislative Oversight and Media Collaboration to Safeguard the National Budget from Unlawful Insertions,\u201d* brought together the Executive, civil society, budget experts and journalists.<\/p>\n
In his welcome address, Chairman of the Senate Press Corps, Chief Taiye Odewale alias Baba T., said the alleged N1.3bn allocation to the non-existent PFIPC exposed the urgent need for stronger checks against unlawful insertions.<\/p>\n
Odewale said SPC findings showed that the allocation was not part of the N9.853 trillion added by the National Assembly to the N58.47 trillion Executive proposal that produced the N68.32 trillion 2026 budget.<\/p>\n
He said the controversy prompted the workshop to strengthen collaboration between legislative oversight and the media in detecting questionable budget entries and to equip journalists with better knowledge of budget scrutiny and AI tools for professional reporting.<\/p>\n
The first paper titled: *\u201cCritical Scrutiny of Budget Line Items: Preventing Garbage In, Garbage Out and Strengthening the Roles of Legislators and the Media\u201d* was presented by Mr. Ebu Emmanuel who represented the Executive Director of CISLAC, Auwal Musa Rafsanjani.<\/p>\n
Key takeaways from his paper include that budget provisions must be justified, transparent, properly costed and measurable, warning that vague, duplicated or inflated items fuel waste.<\/p>\n
He cited ICPC findings which claimed that about 4,508 inserted\/padded projects worth N434.5bn and 66 duplicated projects worth N6.43bn were included in the 2022 budget.<\/p>\n
He urged lawmakers to scrutinise provisions before appropriation, verify their purpose, MDA, location, beneficiaries, cost and expected results, and maintain a clear audit trail from proposal to final budget.<\/p>\n
CISLAC urged the media to scrutinise budget changes, verify projects and track implementation, while institutions collaborate to strengthen transparency.<\/p>\n
He suggested that the media should ask key questions: \u201cWhat changed, why, who justified it, what will it cost, where will it be implemented, who benefits and how will delivery be verified?\u201d<\/p>\n
He recommended that accountability should cover proposal, justification, verification, approval, disclosure, implementation, monitoring, audit and accountability.<\/p>\n
The second paper titled: *\u201cFrom Insertion to Interrogation, the National Assembly\u2019s Role in Evaluating the Executive\u2019s Budget Proposal: A Guide and Roadmap for Evidence-Based, Citizen-Centred and Technology-Enabled Budget Scrutiny\u201d* was delivered by the Director of BudgIT, Oluseun Onigbinde, represented by the Country Director of BudgIT Foundation, Vahyala Kwaga.<\/p>\n
Onigbinde argued that budget scrutiny by the National Assembly is too often focused on appropriations rather than on public policy performance, which should be a critical component of the legislative budget process.<\/p>\n
He identified persistent challenges affecting Nigeria\u2019s budgeting process from the perspectives of different arms of government.<\/p>\n
On the part of the Executive, he identified late submission of the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Strategy Paper (MTEF-FSP) to the National Assembly as a recurring challenge, which often results in expenditure projections exceeding credible available resources.<\/p>\n
On the role of the National Assembly, he noted that limited engagement with Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) contributes to weakened legislative oversight of budget implementation and performance.<\/p>\n
BudgIT therefore recommended early submission of the budget proposal to the National Assembly at least 90 days before the end of the financial year, to allow sufficient time for review.<\/p>\n
It also recommended that the National Assembly assess the performance of an agency\u2019s previous budget before approving a new allocation, and called for stakeholder participation in the budget proposal and review process.<\/p>\n
The MD\/Publisher of The Eagle Times Newspaper, Mr. Ikechukwu Chukwunyere, represented by the Chief Operating Officer, Mr. Tabuko Kennedy, in his presentation titled: *\u201cMaking the Eagle Eye of the Media Sharper at Yearly Budget Scrutinies,\u201d* identified weak budget scrutiny by the media, including overreliance on headline figures and official statements, poor understanding of budget data, limited follow-up, failure to compare allocations across years, detect duplication, verify projects on the ground and track spending from allocation to impact.<\/p>\n
In his recommendations, he urged journalists to follow the money by comparing budgets, releases, expenditure, outputs and impact; scrutinise projects through data and field verification; check previous budgets, audit reports and procurement records; investigate red flags and distinguish verified facts from official claims.<\/p>\n
He also proposed a Senate Press Corps Budget Accountability Reporting Desk, a joint budget scrutiny report within 72 hours of budget presentation, a public database of major projects and tracking at least 10 projects from budget document to project site.<\/p>\n
Ms. Adeola Ademokaya, Nigeria Representative of Mass Media LLC Texas, who was Consultant and Moderator, in her presentation focused on how Artificial Intelligence can strengthen legislative budget oversight and parliamentary journalism.<\/p>\n
She stressed that the national budget is a public trust, covering critical areas such as roads, schools, healthcare, security, jobs and infrastructure.<\/p>\n
She said AI can help journalists analyse lengthy budget documents, compare different versions, identify vague project descriptions, unusual figures and possible duplication, and generate relevant questions for budget defence sessions. It can also simplify complex budget issues for radio, television, newspapers and social media.<\/p>\n
However, she emphasised that AI is an assistant, not the final authority. Journalists must verify information with official documents, seek responses and exercise editorial judgment before publication.<\/p>\n
The core message was simple: Read, question, verify, seek clarification and report responsibly. AI can make journalists faster and more effective, but human judgment remains central to credible journalism.<\/p>\n
The workshop drew participation from lawmakers, budget experts, civil society advocates and members of the Senate Press Corps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By George Mgbeleke The controversial allocation of N1.3 billion to a non-existent Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC) in the 2026 budget dominated discussions on Monday at the Senate Press Corps (SPC) Capacity-Building Workshop in Abuja, as stakeholders called for stronger legislative oversight and media collaboration to safeguard the national budget. The workshop, held at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18050,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18048"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18048\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18049,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18048\/revisions\/18049"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}