TheCable

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has criticised the federal government over the plan to spend $1billion from the excess crude account on the fight against insurgency.

The decision to take the money from the crude account was announced during the national economic council meeting of Thursday.

All the governors were said to have endorsed the plan but Ayo Fayose of Ekiti has since come out to deny giving his consent.

In a statement by Kola Ologbondiyan, the PDP wondered why the government was in need of such amount of money after it claimed that Boko Haram has been defeated.

It called on the national assembly to interrogate the proposed disbursement and subject it to a thorough interrogation.

“The PDP supports the fight against insurgency. We hold our officers and men confronting the terrorists and securing our territorial integrity in high esteem, but we are concerned about the manipulative tendencies connected with the approvals as well as the veracity of claimed purpose of the fund,” the statement read.

“Nigerians would recall that the APC-led federal government had claimed that it has since defeated the insurgents.

“If it would take a billion dollar from a nation’s savings to kill what they long claimed dead, then we challenge APC government to come clean and tell Nigerians the whole truth.

“The era of lies and propaganda is long gone and Nigerians now know the truth. The federal government must be held accountable and stopped from any move to fritter away our national savings.

“By accepting the $1 billion for fighting insurgency, the APC-led federal government has admitted that it lied when it announced that it has defeated the insurgents. They should therefore apologise to Nigerians for giving them a false sense of security, resulting in their vulnerability to attacks by terrorists.”