We bribed National Assembly with N17 Billion to pass 2015 budget- -Okonjo Iwella

Former Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo -Iwella revealed how the National Assembly collected N17 billion bribe before the 2015 budget was passed.

The Minister of Finance who  made this shocking revelation in her new  book titled, ‘Fighting Corruption is Dangerous ‘, said that the N17 billion was categorized as election expenses.

She said, “By the time we presented budget on December 16, 2014 , the oil prices has further fallen down to $58 per barrel. We were prepared and knew we had to trigger the additional expenditure and revenue measure in 2015 to make the budget works. This would be tough, given that we had entered election year.

”  Indeed , legislators initially refused to accept pay cuts to their regular N150 billion budget,  despite dwindling revenues. But, eventually agreed to 13 percent cut against backdrop of Ministers accepting voluntary 50 percent to their basic salaries .

“In a tough session with the National Assembly  ad-hoc committee on budget (made up chairs of Finance committee and Appropriation Committee of both chambers and other leaders  of National Assembly), an additional N20 billion was reintroduce as election expenses for the National Assembly members .

“We insisted that the amount should be dropped becauae it nullified the 13 percent cut to their statutory  budget,  but managed N20 billion figure by only N3 billion to N17 . This become the price to have 2015 budget passed. ”

The shocking revelation about the passage of 2015 budget was revealed by Festus Keyamo (SAN) on his twitter handle and took the photograph of the page in the the former Minister’s new book.

The 2018 budget spent about six months in the National Assembly before he was eventually passed and sent to Presidency on Friday.