N3bn Social Register Verification Contract: Tinubu’s Govt Keeps Elevating Cronyism As An Art – CUPP 

Mobolaji Michael 

THE Coalition of United Political Parties (CUPP) has said it is distressed by the report of the approval by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu through the Chief of Staff, Femi Gbajabiamila, to the suspended Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation “to expend an outrageous and mind-boggling sum of Three Billion Naira (N3,000,000,000.00) to verify the national register of the poor.”

High Chief Peter Ameh, the National Secretary of CUPP,  in a statement,  said the coalition frowns and condemns “this mindless attack on our collective purse in the name of verification of the national register.

“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.”

High Chief Ameh says CUPP believes that a prudent approach could have achieved the same goal with less of citizens’ tax money through the acquisition of the same national register from the thirty-six states of the federation and FCT wherein the rural areas are predominantly domiciled. 

He further states that the coalition is pained that this elementary form of conservation of public funds was wilfully neglected on the alter of cronyism, raising CUPP’s concern and that of a majority of Nigerians about the financial stewardship and the efficient allocation of the nation’s scarce resources by this government to projects that will truly be beneficial to the masses. 

“CUPP believes 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.”

Eighteen-Eleven Media