No budget was released to me as minister, says Uju Kennedy Ohanenye

By Goli Innocent

Former Minister of Women Affairs, Uju Kennedy Ohanenye, has disclosed that no budgetary allocation was released to her ministry throughout her tenure, alleging deep systemic flaws within Nigeria’s civil service structure.

Speaking on Channels Television, Ohanenye described the civil service as a major contributor to Nigeria’s governance challenges, insisting that structural weaknesses not merely individuals are responsible for inefficiencies.

“This issue of civil servants is very passionate to me,” she said. “If you should ask me my opinion like you ask me now, I would tell you 70 per cent of our problems have civil servants. And why are there problems? It’s not equally their fault that they are the problem. It’s the system, the system gives them the room to behave the way they are behaving that is totally ruining the country.”

According to her, the system creates room for waste and unchecked spending, particularly in the budgeting process within ministries.

“Because if a president will come out and give out trillions of naira to ministries… it goes to the ministries, isn’t it? What do they do with it? What do they write in their budgets that are being approved?” she asked.

She questioned the approval of what she described as inflated budget figures.

“Who are the people approving such budgets where 1.8 billion would be written for advocacies, meetings and consultancies and somebody will approve it? Who are the people approving those budgets? The National Assembly and the president. That is the issue.”

Ohanenye further criticised how budgets are prepared within ministries.

“They can’t write anything in a hurry. They just copy and paste what they did,” she said.

The former minister alleged that she was sidelined during the preparation of her ministry’s budget proposals.

“I had a lot of issues with them. Why are you not consulting me to write what I need you people to achieve and put for the budget?” she said.

When asked whether she was fully involved in the budget presented to the National Assembly, she responded: “They did it behind me. I had to complain. I had to write.”

She then revealed that despite the budget process, no funds were released to her ministry.

“But fortunately for me, the budget was not released. No budget was released to me until the time I was a minister,” she said.

Ohanenye suggested the withholding of funds may have been part of a broader reform effort.

“Because I felt that and I know the president probably is doing that because he already knew that the system needs to be changed before he continues dishing out money to these places,” she said.

Describing certain expenditures as excessive, she added:

“The money given to them, to me, is a waste. It’s a waste. Because you can’t write off 1.8 billion. You use 150 million to do a meeting of about 100 people and it is okay.”

According to her, attempts to challenge such practices often meet resistance.

“When you speak, they look at you like you’re pouring sand into their garri That is a problem.”

Her remarks add fresh momentum to ongoing debates about public sector reform, fiscal accountability, and transparency in Nigeria’s budgeting process.