A Northern Group, the League of Northern Democrats, on Friday, berated President Bola Tinubu for ‘claiming’ to have cut the cost of governance by only slashing the benefits of ministers while his remains are intact, News About Nigeria reports.
Speaking for the group, the spokesman, Ladan Salihu, during an interview on Friday’s edition of Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily, noted that the president cannot claim to be cutting costs while he is living a flamboyant lifestyle.
He further pointed out that if the President wanted to cut the cost of governance, he would not have purchased the new presidential jet.
He said, “Look, leadership is all about inspiration. It’s not an inverted pyramid. You have to, by your ways, by your actions, show the lead from the best of examples. You cannot buy a presidential jet for 170 billion at the going rate and buy a yacht for 5 billion and do a cost-saving measure. Put together, that is almost half of these expenses. So, it is just merely symbolic. When you say you have reduced the ministerial vehicles to three, as a journalist—let me use this word loosely down – I will ask you, ‘What about the remaining vehicles?
“Where are they going to be warehoused? Are they going to be kept in the garage? The vehicles are there already. They’ve been bought. So, what it means is that if I am a minister and I have 10 vehicles, I’ll keep seven. So, we are not, in my opinion, about to see a drastic change in the chain of convoys ministers have. Do not expect to see the convoy of a minister with three vehicles. It won’t happen. If someone tells me it is going to happen; if somebody tells you it is going to happen, we are just fooling ourselves,” he added.
