HURIWA condemns budget for presidential yacht

A civil society organization the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, has condemned the Federal government and the Lagos state government for budgeting N5 billion for a presidential yacht and N18 million for Christmas chicken respectively.

The Rights group in a statement by its national coordinator Emmanuel Onwubiko, also condemned the poor handling of the matter by the Presidency and the Senate.

Comrade Onwubiko described as shady and suspicious the admission by a Senator Ali Ndume, that the said yacht was already in the possession of the Nigerian Navy before the tabling of the budget proposal.

“HURIWA is convinced that the decision on the Presidential Yacht has an incurably inherent corruption motive because the procurement process failed the test of transparency in such a way that it was never implemented in compliance with the 6 principles of public procurement under the extant procurement Act of 2007 which are accountability, fairness, reliability transparency, ethical standards and economy.

“HURIWA is therefore calling on the president to identify, arrest and prosecute government officials who authorised the acceptance of the Yacht worth N5 billion in which a part is to be paid in dollars,” the statement said.

HURIWA also condemned strongly the purchase of chickens for politicians by the Lagos state government.

“HURIWA condemned the Lagos state government for this profligacy of purchasing multi-million Naira chickens for politicians at a time a greater percentage of the good people of Lagos state are confronted by mass poverty given that the National Bureau of Statistics had said over 133 million Nigerian households are multidimensionally poor.”