Office Of The First Lady N4 Billion Budget Waste Of Money – Obi

The former governor of Anambra State Mr Peter Obi has condemned the establishment of the office of the first lady.

He made the call on the 8th Annual Public lecture organised by the Foursquare Gospel Church Nigeria in Lagos ahead of the Church’s 66th Annual Convention 2021.

Obi, in his incisive lecture, did not mince word in querying the rationale behind the establishment of the office of the First Ladies in Nigeria, adding that it is an outright waste of national resources, while canvassing for the scraping of the same office.

“The cost of governance in Nigeria is too much, bigger than that of any other country in the world. Why do we have to have the office of a first lady that has to be allotted a budget of about N4 billion to run?

To face the reality, nobody voted for my wife when I was a governor which is the same with all other current incumbents, including the president of the country. Then, how can she have an office when we are happily married and are covered under my disposition as a governor of a State?

How can we buy about 20 vehicles for a First Lady whose duty is not enshrined in our constitution with huge number of special advisers, and other official staff on the government pay roll?,” he stated.

The former governor mentioned that the most critical aspect of fighting insecurity and tackling the challenges of the nation is good governance. According to him, if there is good governance, all the issues and discussion about security challenges in the country will be taken care of.

With an analogy of measuring development, Obi stated that Human Development Index (HDI) which has three dimensions; the high, medium and low, Nigeria is still at the low ebb. He categorised the index as lifespan in Nigeria which is at 55, and education, which shows that Nigeria today has the highest number of out-of-school children.

He additionally mentioned that with that alarming revelation, about 70 percent of them from the northern part of Nigeria had not been to school. The number three according to him is capital income. He disclosed that about 98 million Nigerians are living under poverty which is about 50 percent of our population.

The program turned out to be a platform to interrogate unnecessary government expenditures that have put the country’s economy in a bad shape.