The Abia South Senatorial District representative in the Senate, Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, has accused Senator Abdul Ningi of alleging that ranking senators received N500 million.
Abaribe, a former minority leader of the Senate and ranking senator denied receiving such amount of money from the Senate.
In an interview with the Independent, the only All Progressive Grand Alliance senator in the senate explained that Senator Ningi said such amount was shared.
He distanced himself from the claim, stating that such news can set Nigerians against the Senate.
He stated categorically that he did not receive any N500 million.
In his words, “I never got any N500 million. I think Jarigbe tried to clarify his statement and he came back subsequently to say no Ninigi told me I was given and he didn’t get it because he is also a ranking Senator. I think that at the end of the day, what you see is that, I am an All Progressives GrandAlliance (APGA) Senator and I’m the only APGA Senator in the Senate. Maybe, being a minority of the minority, they didn’t consider me worthy of being given. Nobody told me that senior Senators are receiving N500 million.
Both Senator Jarigbe and the Senate leader, Senator Opeyemi Bamidele tried to clarify this issue, number one, nobody was given N500 million because that is what is trending. A few of my constituents called me to say that I got N500 million and we are asking you for money. I don’t want to give us one naira out of it. What Senator Opeyemi said is that of course, we get what we call zonal intervention projects which some Nigerians know as constituency projects and he said this thing takes a budget circle which is 12 months. If at the end of 12 months, you do not get to see what is in the budget for your constituency then you hold your representative either in the House of Representatives or in the Senate responsible.”
He continued, “I think Jarigbe also stated that he didn’t say anybody got the money, Ninigi said I got but I was trying to tell him that he shouldn’t have complained because I didn’t get and I didn’t complain. But there is something very clear which Nigerians need to know, there are privileges that go with offices. If for example, you are the President and a minister decides that he would like to put this type of project within the President’s senatorial constituency that is the privilege of office. And I think that happens everywhere. As the chairman of the Southeast Senators during the time of the Buhari administration, I remembered that we fought a pitched battle against the Minister of Transport at that time and we say to him that he can not give Southeast a single railway and then give standard rail gauge to the Niger Republic. And we asked why Nigeria should spend that kind of money when our people are not getting it.”
“Those are the kind of privileges that you see when you are at the top of the heap in Nigeria. And I think that what Jarigbe meant to say was that some people enjoy certain privileges here that are understood by every senator and I do not think that the intent was just to set Nigerians against the Senate,” he added.
