By CHARLES IWUOHA

The 2023 Labour Party (LP) Presidential Candidate, Mr. Peter Obi, on Friday said the N15 billion budgeted for the new residence of the Vice President could be deployed to fuel police operational vehicles.

Obi said the money could be used to increase police officers’ allowances from N5,000 to N15,000 per day.

Writing on X, the former Anambra State Governor faulted the money budgeted for the office of President Bola Tinubu, Vice President Kashim Shettima and their aides.

According to Obi, “While I am still waiting for the receipt of the full details of the 2024 budget for examination and to ensure the prioritization of the items for growth, I wish to comment on some of the items that are already in the public domain.

“The sum of N15.961 billion has been budgeted for trips for the aides of the president and the vice president. If the aides are spending this much, one can extrapolate that their principals, the President, and the Vice President, will spend twice as much, which will be about N30 billion.

“This means that in 2024 the office of the President and Vice President, and their aides will be gulping over N45b for trips alone. Furthermore, the office of the Chief Of Staff budgeted N20 billion for the renovation of the President and the Vice President’s offices in Lagos and Abuja and their full ‘digitization’.

“If you add N45 billion, being the least that will be spent on transportation, and N20 billion earmarked for renovations, it comes to about N65 billion, which is more than N57 billion, being the amount passed by the Senate last week for the Police Trust Fund, to secure over 200m people. Join me in figuring out the alternatives of what this amount can do in real productive terms for our dear country, especially in a critical area like internal security.

“We have over 5,000 Police stations and operations, across the country. Half of these police stations have no functional vehicles. Even those that have are given less than N5,000 for fuel in a day, which is why if you are lucky, for prominent people like me, to call the police for any intervention in an emergency, the first thing they tell you is – ‘we have no fuel’.

“Assuming we decide to prioritize our lists and use these resources as most of the trips and the renovations are of no value to our growth and productivity, we can approach local manufacturers like Innoson and others and order 2,500 4×4 trucks which as of today cost about N30 million.

“We will be able to get a 20% discount because we are buying in large quantities and paying them upfront. It will amount to N25 million each, which will be N62.5 billion for half of the police stations that do not have operational vehicles today, and which will be taken care of by the money we save from the budgeted travel and renovations.

“The N15 billion budgeted for the new residence of the Vice President can be used for fuelling police operational cars by tripling their fuel allowances from about N5000 presently to N15,000 per day, which will come to N13.687 billion.”

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