Ambode Wasted N3.2b On Preparing For Buhari’s Botched Visit – PDP

Akinwunmi Ambode and Muhammadu BuhariThe Lagos State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has alleged that the sum of N3.2 billion was spent by the state government in preparing for the aborted visit of President Muhammadu Buhari to the state on Monday.
President Buhari was scheduled to commence a two-day working visit to Lagos State on Monday but had to cancel due to what the Presidency termed “scheduling difficulties”.
The president, who promised to personally visit the state after the month of Ramadan, was subsequently represented by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, who commissioned various projects embarked upon by Governor Akinwunmi Ambode.
In its reaction to Buhari’s no-show, the Lagos PDP said the purported preparation for the visit of the president to the state was “a fraud and another expose that the APC is too haphazard in governance, hence the total disconnect between the state governor and the Presidency, thereby causing the state not to know that the president had changed his mind on visiting the state”.
The party, in a statement by its publicity secretary, Taofiq Gani, said Governor Ambode must account for the over N3.2 billion claimed to have been expended in what it called “botched visit of the president”.
The PDP spokesman said it was a mismanagement of public funds, misplacement of priority and propaganda to have invited the Presidency “to commission ordinary rehabilitation of roads, which are not even more than seven in a state with 245 Wards”.
“We demand that the over N3.2bn claimed to have been spent to welcome the president to Lagos must be accounted for. The beneficiaries of the contracts and the costs of the contracts involved in the ceremonies must be made public for Lagosians to know. This is needless waste of public funds”, Mr. Gani said.
When contacted, the Lagos APC spokesman, Joe Igbokwe, said the PDP should not be taken seriously as a party in Lagos.
He said, “Let them wait until they take over leadership in Lagos; until they win election in Lagos and sit in Alausa, then they can decide on what to do. Ambode is hitting every corner of Lagos, working hard in every corner of the state; they don’t know what to do. What’s their business if he spent N20bn? Lagos is working, everything is working”.