The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) says the approval given by President Muhammadu Buhari to purchase arms with $1billion is a “renewed attempt by the Presidency to loot the $1billion.”
“It is a notorious fact that the presidency and the APC have been plotting to loot this $1 billion from our heavily depleted Excess Crude Account (ECA) since last year, using the guise of fight against insurgency,” Kola Ologbodiyan, National Publicity Secretary said in a statement on Thursday.
The opposition party while calling on Nigerians to reject the approval of $1 billion for the purchase of arms by the President also urged the National Assembly to commence appropriate constitutional legislative actions against him for gross misconduct in unilaterally approving the release of the funds without recourse to the lawmakers.
This money, it added, would be used by the government to finance Buhari‘s ”interests in the upcoming All Progressives Congress (APC)’s national convention and 2019 election campaign.”
According to the PDP, its investigation revealed the presidency ”willfully sidestepped the National Assembly so as to avoid legislative scrutiny and accountability to pave way for the diverting of the fund for selfish partisan purposes.”
“This is the same Buhari administration that has been boasting of having technically defeated the insurgents. This is also an administration that is not known to have exhausted subsisting budgetary allocations for defence.
“Democracy thrives on constitutional processes of separation of powers, due diligence and transparency and not on totalitarian tendencies. PDP believes the President, as a leader, reasonably ought to have known that he is in no way above the law.”