Culled from Saturday Tribune


At least two main security outfits in the country, the State Security Services (SSS) and the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) have launched a probe into circumstances leading to the announcement of presidential assent on the 2009 supplementary budget late December, last year.

President Umaru Yar’Adua had left the country on November 24, a day before the Senate passed a harmonised copy of the budget, in concurrence with the version earlier passed by the House of Representatives.

While the constitution guarantees that a bill can only stay 30 days on the president’s table after its passage by the National Assembly, no one was sure the supplementary budget would not lapse before Yar’Adua returned to the country.

But the kitchen cabinet announced, close to the end of the year, that it had secured the signature of the president on the N382 billion Supplementary Budget, through which the lawmakers extended the financial year to March 2010.

There have been uncertainties as to the manner in which the presidential assent was obtained on the budget, with some sources claiming that the President was not in a position to sign the budget as at the end of last year.

Sources claimed that the President was in and out of coma at that time and that he could not have been in a position to read, understand and assent the 90-page budget.

Sources comfirmed to the Saturday Tribune that the two agencies are now on the trail of all presidential aides who were linked with the passage of the budget to Saudi Arabia.

A source said that one top aide of the president has been quizzed in Abuja and that the aide told the security operatives that he did not see the president physically to sign the budget.

The aide was said to have stated that he was aware the budget was taken to Saudi Arabia and that he was on the team that took the budget to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia but he was only asked to stay at the lobby of the King Faisal Hospital, while another aide of the president collected the budget and brought it about two hours later after it had been signed.

Said a source: “Recent situation has really tasked the patience of the security operatives. We are largely in the dark about the situation and the whereabouts of our Commander-in-Chief and that is unheard of and the leaders have decided that we must be on top of the situation.”

It was gathered that the security system would now take the desired interest in the health situation of President Yar’Adua, so as to be able to brief “the system” on the true state of things.