![](\"http:\/\/arewa.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Senator-Yusuf-flouts-Senate-Presidents-order-holds-secret-budget-defence.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThe approval followed a report by the Senate Committee Chairman on Local debts and Foreign Loans, Senator Clifford Akhimienmona Ordia.<\/p>\n
According to Ordia, the Committee had interacted with Federal Ministry officials and those of Kogi State government in line with set rules on approval of funds and found satisfactory.<\/p>\n
\u201cSenate on 16th October 2019 began consideration of President Muhammadu Buhari\u2019s request to approve N10.069 for Kogi State government being refunds of expenses done on behalf of the Federal government.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Committee interacted with the Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Works,<\/p>\n
Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Finance, and the Director-General of Debt Management office, as well as the Kogi State Ministry of Finance.<\/p>\n
Following the report, Senate Minority leader, Enyinnaya Abaribe cautioned the Senate on approving refund at a time when the governorship election was three days, stressing that the money could be used to fund election.<\/p>\n
Abaribe called for a weeks delay on grounds that the governor was notorious for misappropriating funds which should be used to the advantages of Kogi people.<\/p>\n
\u201cI agree that the state which does well should be refunded, but in this case, what I don\u2019t want is a misuse of the fund because it is for the people of Kogi State.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe election is next week and this money will be used for election; let\u2019s delay it for one week for the speed with which this report was turned in is suspicious.\u201d<\/p>\n
President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, however, closed contributions on the matter saying that he would not entertain any more opinions.<\/p>\n
\u201cThanks for making your point, but I can\u2019t take any more contributions.<\/p>\n
In the last Senate, Kogi State had applied for the fund alongside other states during the 7th senate but was not approved, supports say it is a mere coincidence that the state re-applied at a time close to the election.<\/p>\n
The refund was approved after majority voice votes were taken.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Senate on Wednesday approved the refund of N10.069 billion to Kogi State government ahead of governorship election slated for Saturday. The approval followed a report by the Senate Committee Chairman on Local debts and Foreign Loans, Senator Clifford Akhimienmona Ordia. According to Ordia, the Committee had interacted with Federal Ministry officials and those of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":163216,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1,3,4],"tags":[30,11105,499,62,351],"class_list":["post-167501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-more","category-news","category-politics","tag-arewa","tag-governorship-election","tag-kogi","tag-politics","tag-senate"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=167501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167501\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/163216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=167501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=167501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=167501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}