In the aftermath of Nigeria’s underwhelming performance at the Paris 2024 Olympics, Sports Minister Senator John Enoh has come under fire for purchasing a brand-new Toyota Prado LC300 3.5L Twin Turbo worth N150 million. The lavish expenditure, which comes at a time of widespread public dissatisfaction with Nigeria’s sports administration, has sparked outrage among Nigerians, who are still reeling from the country’s disappointing Olympic performance.<\/p>\n
The extravagant expenditure, uncovered by Abuja City Journal<\/em>, comes at a time when the country is facing severe economic challenges, sparking outrage among Nigerians.<\/p>\n Documents obtained by the publication reveal that the payment for the luxury vehicle was made on July 8, 2024, to QLS Global Services Limited, the supplier of the car. In addition to the vehicle cost, a further N7,137,137.36 was paid to the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) as a 5% tax on the purchase.<\/p>\n This spending spree by the Minister comes at a time when millions of Nigerians are struggling with the effects of inflation, skyrocketing food prices, and fuel costs, exacerbated by the removal of fuel subsidies earlier in the year. Many are questioning the appropriateness of such purchases by public officials amid widespread economic hardship.<\/p>\n “How do we expect our athletes to excel when funds that should be channeled toward their training and support are being used to buy luxury cars for officials?” one sports analyst remarked on X (formerly Twitter).<\/p>\n “The timing of this purchase is a slap in the face to Nigerians who expected better from our sports ministry,” another sports enthusiast said.<\/p>\n Further investigations into the matter revealed that the President of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), Ibrahim Gusau, also benefited from similar luxuries. On May 21, 2024, the NFF spent N87.3 million on an official vehicle for Gusau, a transaction handled by Mujaf Automobile Nigeria Ltd.<\/p>\n It is worth noting that earlier in the year, the Minister of Sports had planned to spend a total of N300 million on two high-end vehicles\u2014a Toyota Prado and a Lexus RX 570\u2014as outlined in the 2024 national budget. While the Toyota Prado has already been acquired, it remains to be seen when or if the Lexus will follow.<\/p>\n Public outrage has been further stoked by additional revelations surrounding the financial management of the NFF. Records show that the NFF has spent a staggering N37 million on auditing services over the past two years. Notably, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) received N18.8 million on May 8, 2024, for auditing the federation\u2019s 2023 accounts, a sum identical to what was paid for auditing services for 2022. Moreover, in July 2021, N9.4 million was paid for auditing the NFF’s 2020 accounts.<\/p>\n Critics have raised concerns about the prioritization of funds, particularly at a time when Nigerian sports programs are struggling with underfunding, outdated infrastructure, and inconsistent support for athletes.<\/p>\n While some have defended the purchases as part of standard government protocol for officials, others argue that these luxuries are tone-deaf, especially in the current economic climate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the aftermath of Nigeria’s underwhelming performance at the Paris 2024 Olympics, Sports Minister Senator John Enoh has come under fire for purchasing a brand-new Toyota Prado LC300 3.5L Twin Turbo worth N150 million. The lavish expenditure, which comes at a time of widespread public dissatisfaction with Nigeria’s sports administration, has sparked outrage among Nigerians, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48860,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48858"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48859,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48858\/revisions\/48859"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}