BudgIT Alleges Threat To Life Of Staff, Asks IG To Intervene
By UDO ONYEKA
BudgIT said its attention has been drawn to a threat received by one of its community champion in Abuja as a result of a fraud alert post shared from Tracka page to a Facebook page, sometime last
week.
BudgIT in a statement said the post, which was initially published on its Tracka page on the 30th of May, called out Senator Aduda and Ministry of Water Resources for allegedly mismanaging financial
resources to the tune of N225 million and converting a public project into a personal project, by
naming the constituency project after Jummai Aduda, Senator Aduda’s mother.
The post which reads “Fraud Alert, Sen. Aduda aided by Min of Water Resources has converted
a public project of N225 million. The Constituency Project – gulped N100 million (2016) N75 million (2017) & N50 million (2019) – is now Jummai Aduda Youth centre with engraved mother’s
picture.”
This action garnered several reactions from active citizens who joined BudgIT and Tracka in
condemning the unacceptable and unconstitutional act.
” Following this post, Sunday Dogo Zaka – a loyalist to Senator Phillip Aduda issued a threat through his Facebook page that the Abuja South PDP youth forum would “take care” of him, after which we received a distress call from our Community champion, Garba Abdullahi.
” He claimed that he has been receiving calls from strange and unfamiliar people who also
threatened his life. Another anonymous caller advised him to visit the Senator’s former aide
because they plan to “do him something bad”.
BudgIT said its community champion, Garba Abdullahi, has gone into hiding as a result of these threats.
” As an organization, BudgIT, together with Tracka reaffirms our position that the naming of
constituency projects is not left to the prerogative of the parties involved as there are laid
down procedures to be followed when re-naming a project. This might have community inputs
but the Honourable Senator is aware that there are laid down principles in re-naming a public
project, as against what was stated in the Appropriation Act.
” We also maintain that we will not share false information with members of the public to incite
misunderstanding between them and their representatives at any point.
” By issuing this press release, we are calling on The Inspector General of Police to investigate
this issue and prevent any mishap from happening to any of our staff, community champions”, BudgIT said.
