By; AMOS TAUNA, Kaduna
Coalition United Political Parties (CUPP), has expressed dismay over the approval by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu through the Chief of Staff, Femi Gbajabiamila, to the suspended Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, Betta Edu to expend the sum of N3,000,000,000(three billion naira) to verify the national register of the poor.
The coalition of political parties condemned mindless attack on the collective purse in the name of verification of the national register.
The National Secretary CUPP, High Chief Peter Ameh, in a statement yesterday, noted, “This reckless and mindless spending on verification of national register reflects a lack of fiscal discipline and responsibility that has become a hallmark of President Tinubu’s government who in the guise of helping the poor, keeps elevating cronyism as an art, which we ignorantly thought had gone with President Buhari’s administration.”
CUPP believes, according to the statement that a prudent approach could have achieved the same goal with less of the tax money through the acquisition of the same national register from the thirty-six states of the federation and FCT.
The statement observed that the rural areas are predominantly domiciled and is pained that the elementary form of conservation of public funds on what it called “was wilfully neglected on the alter of cronyism”, raising CUPP’s concern and that of majority of Nigerians about the financial stewardship and the efficient allocation of the scarce resources by the government to projects that will trully be beneficial to the masses.
“It is CUPP’s belief that this mindless spending through cronies such as New Planet Projects Limited, a company controlled by the family of Dr. Bunmi Tunji Ojo, the Minister of Interior undermines whatever little confidence Nigerians may have had in the present government, and therefore brings to the fore the urgent need for more rigorous budgetary oversights by the National Assembly, which has from day one begun to exhibit all the symptoms of a rubber stamp parliament that abdicates its oversight functions when most needed,” the statement explained.
