The presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Mr Peter Obi, has described the N2.17 trillion supplementary budget which was signed on Wednesday by President Bola Tinubu as wasteful.
Obi in a statement berated the government for being insensitive and uncaring about the suffering of Nigerians while squandering resources on a mysterious presidential yacht and fleets of SUVs.
He noted that going by the manner the budgetary allocations were done, it was obvious the President was unaware of the dire crisis in the country.
The statement reads, “A supplementary budget is a budget made for very important national welfare needs of the people which were not captured originally in the main budget or do not have adequate funding.
“Admittedly, some items in the current budget may not have taken into consideration the needs of a new administration, but it is expected that a supplementary budget this late in the financial year should reflect mostly urgent items of national welfare.”
“Sadly, the most pressing national needs and emergencies have not featured in the supplementary budget that was just announced by the government. For example, the United Nations and World Food Programme have recently alerted that up to 6.5 million Nigerians will go hungry next year.
“This number is largely from among citizens in Sokoto, Adamawa, Borno, Yobe and Zamfara States. A caring government, in order to plan for the mitigation of such pending catastrophe, can request supplementary budget provisions to cushion those under threat.”
He complained that the supplementary budget didn’t feature any “item of urgent social welfare,” but instead, “the items being made to dominate public discourse on the budget include a mysterious presidential yacht, presidential jets, the furnishing of already lavishly furnished presidential quarters and offices, fleets of luxury SUVs, etc.”
“The government’s overall attitude does not indicate that it is aware that the country is in a huge crisis, nor is the government in tune with the plight of the generality of our people.
“Even worse is the fact that most of the funding for these profligate expenditures will be largely borrowed. The least that Nigerians expect from the government at this difficult moment is empathy and realism, not lavish indulgence.”
