FG censured for spending ₦21bn on new VP lodge

A civil society organisation, the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project, SERAP, has condemned the humongous amount spent on the construction of a new residence for Nigeria’s vice president.
TheCornet reports minister of federal capital territory, Nyesom Wike, as saying during the commissioning of the sprawling edifice that it gulped ₦21billion.
Wike explained that the project was initially awarded at ₦7billion and begun in 2010 was abandoned in 2015.
In its statement, SERAP said that the cost of the project amounts to “a wasteful spending”.
The body wondered why the government undertook such a project at a time of “growing poverty, surging national debt and inability to pay a working minimum wage.”
The statement added: “The money spent on the VP’s residence funds could be better spent on providing the much-needed infrastructure to stimulate economic growth, addressing the challenges of over 20 million out-of-school children and the menace of insecurity in nearly all parts of the country”.