{"id":67980,"date":"2025-06-13T11:08:01","date_gmt":"2025-06-13T11:08:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/?p=67980"},"modified":"2025-06-13T11:08:19","modified_gmt":"2025-06-13T11:08:19","slug":"67980","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/2025\/06\/13\/67980\/","title":{"rendered":"CUPP: N39bn ICC Renovation Should Have Resolved Teachers&#8217; Strike"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Omoniyi David<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Coalition of United Political Parties (CUPP) has condemned the N39 billion renovation of the International Conference Centre (ICC), Abuja, describing it as misplaced priority amidst an ongoing teachers&#8217; strike in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).<\/p>\n<p>In a statement on Wednesday, CUPP&#8217;s National Publicity Secretary, Chief Peter Ameh, called for an immediate investigation into the expenditure by the FCT Administration (FCTA), arguing that the funds should have been used to address the prolonged strike that has kept FCT public primary school pupils out of classrooms for over three months.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is appalling that while pupils remain at home and primary healthcare centres are shut due to strikes, the FCTA spent N39 billion on giving the ICC, already functional; a facelift,\u201d Ameh said.<\/p>\n<p>He described the spending as a &#8220;shameful betrayal of public trust&#8221;, comparing it to the modest N240 million used to originally construct the ICC during the Babangida administration. \u201cThis is not leadership,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>Ameh accused the administration of ignoring pressing needs in education and healthcare while focusing on &#8220;vanity projects.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He urged a reorientation of government priorities and immediate accountability for the expenditure.<\/p>\n<p>In defence, FCT Minister Nyesom Wike said the renovation was ordered by President Tinubu after he was dissatisfied with the ICC\u2019s dilapidated state during a visit.<\/p>\n<p>Wike added that the upgrade was necessary to maintain the centre\u2019s international relevance.<\/p>\n<p>An FCTA official, speaking anonymously, said funds for the ICC renovation were specially approved by the presidency and could not be diverted to pay striking workers.<\/p>\n<p>However, he acknowledged the urgency of resolving the strike and reopening schools.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Omoniyi David The Coalition of United Political Parties (CUPP) has condemned the N39 billion renovation of the International Conference Centre (ICC), Abuja, describing it as misplaced priority amidst an ongoing teachers&#8217; strike in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). In a statement on Wednesday, CUPP&#8217;s National Publicity Secretary, Chief Peter Ameh, called for an immediate [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":67981,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[183,172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67980","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\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67980"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67983,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67980\/revisions\/67983"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}