The Presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) at the 2023 general election, Peter Obi, has implored the President Bola Tinubu-led government to review the country’s budget and focus on prioritizing health, education and poverty alleviation.
Making this call in a statement made available on his official X account, the former Anambra governor, who said that he was waiting to receive full details of the 2024 budget, lamented over the bogus amount earmarked for presidential trips.
Obi further faulted the amount earmarked to renovate the President and vice president’s offices in Lagos and Abuja.
The post by Obi partly read, “The sum of N15.961 billion has been budgeted for trips for the aides of the President and the vice president. If the aides are spending this much, one can extrapolate that their principals, the President, and the Vice President, will spend twice as much which will be about N30 billion. This means that in 2024 the office of the President and Vice President, and their aides will be gulping over N45b for trips alone. Furthermore, the office of the Chief Of Staff budgeted N20 billion for the renovation of the President and the Vice President’s offices in Lagos and Abuja and their full ‘digitization’.
“I urge that we urgently review our budget and revise it to prioritize our urgent needs in Health, Education, and pulling people out of poverty which will only be achieved by a planning and budgeting strategy that targets these critical need areas. It is time we recognize our difficulty, especially the suffering of the poor masses and prioritize our expenditure. That is what we clamor for in the New Nigeria which we insist is very possible.”
