By Augustine Akhilomen
…Urges Him To Cut Down Cost Of Governance
A faction of the Pan-Yoruba socio-political group, Afenifere, has urged President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to proffer solutions to the lingering economic hardship ravaging Nigerians.
In a statement issued by Afenifere Deputy Leader, Oladipo Olaitan, and Deputy Secretary General, Alade Rotimi-John, they decried some of the Tinubu administration’s “profligate predilection or inclination to waste resources,” stating that “$100 million or N240 billion as the purchase price for an Airbus A330 as a jet for the President and a further $50 million to retrofit is uncalled for.”
Afenifere also noted that the majority of Nigerians are “troubled by the pervasive hardship, crippling hunger, unremitting insecurity in the land, runaway inflation, and massive unemployment, all of which have left the people worse off than they were at the beginning.”
It noted specifically that the N950 million budgeted for the purchase of a new set of armored Cadillac Escalade Limousine SUVs as befitting vehicles for the President, N21 billion for renovating a new mansion for the Vice President, N90 billion as subsidy for religious pilgrimage, and N10 billion to renovate the Presidential Lodge at Ribadu Road, Lagos, among others, give an insight into the “wasteful nature of the administration.”
“Afenifere is scandalized or shamed by the odium and poor international or global image that have attended these profligate or prodigal expenditures,” the group said.
“We are puzzled that a government can be so masterful at diversionary tactics just to lull the people to sleep and confuse them as they wake amid grave national circumstances and of a strident or sustained debate of its desultory or unmethodical handling of governance,” the statement added.
