The Labour Party’s Presidential Candidate, Peter Obi, has said that a disputed allocation of around N60 billion for the purchase of SUVs for legislators would be unfathomable under his future government. Despite the doctors’ attempts to twist his statements and cause confusion, Obi strongly denounced the allocation during a press conference on Monday.<\/p>\n
Obi clarified that he unequivocally disapproved of the allocation, emphasizing that his administration would have rejected the idea, deeming it inappropriate amidst Nigeria’s pressing developmental challenges. He drew attention to the collapsing state of healthcare in the country, leading to infant mortality rates surpassing even that of India, a nation seven times Nigeria’s population. Obi criticized the insensitivity of allocating funds exceeding those designated for healthcare to provide vehicles for 400 individuals, particularly when many of them, including ex-governors, ex-senators, and ministers, already possess numerous parked cars at their homes.<\/p>\n
Expressing his concern, Obi stated, “To use funds higher than what is allocated to primary healthcare to buy cars for 400 people is very troubling and shows the height of insensitivity. I will not do it as President of Nigeria.” He suggested exploring options to purchase more cost-effective vehicles, possibly from locally made firms.<\/p>\n
As a former Governor of Anambra state, Obi shared his experience in handling similar situations. He recounted negotiating for concessionaire pricing for 60,406 saloon vehicles, sufficient for judges, permanent secretaries, newly appointed commissioners, the deputy governor, and himself as the governor. Obi even challenged the public to verify the story with Peugeot Automobile Nigeria Ltd, specifically referring to Mr. Eric Maydieu, the AGM Commercial at the time.<\/p>\n
Addressing whether he had discussed his stance with LP legislators, Obi confirmed that he had and they acknowledged the vehicles as official cars, not for personal use. However, he emphasized that under his leadership, such allocations would not even be considered, particularly during a time when Nigerians are grappling with the challenges imposed by the poor management of the economy by public servants.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Labour Party’s Presidential Candidate, Peter Obi, has said that a disputed allocation of around N60 billion for the purchase of SUVs for legislators would be unfathomable under his future government. Despite the doctors’ attempts to twist his statements and cause confusion, Obi strongly denounced the allocation during a press conference on Monday. Obi clarified […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":5290,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[302],"class_list":["post-5287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-peter-obi"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5287","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\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5287"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5298,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5287\/revisions\/5298"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}