Babatunde Fashola disowns N2bn voted for regional housing scheme in the Ministry of Housing's 2017 budget

It what appears to be another case of budget padding, the Minister of Road, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, has denied knowledge of N2 billion voted for regional housing scheme in the 2017 budget.

At the Ministries budget defence hearing in the senate yesterday, Fashola said he was not aware of the N2 billion found in the budget as it did not emanate from his office.

Fashola stated this when the chairman of the Senate committee on Housing and Urban Development, Barnabas Gemade, inquired what the scheme was all about as it had never appeared in the previous budget.

In his defense, Fashola said that the N2 billion was inserted by officials in the Ministry of Finance. He insisted that it is not a project of the Ministry of Housing, that it was not part of the projects that they submitted and he has no knowledge about it.

Gemade afterwards said that the Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, will be invited to explain the essence of the project and why Fashola was not aware of it.

Recall that the 2016 budget was enmeshed in a budget padding scandal which till date has not been resolved.