The Federal Government led by Nigeria’s President, Muhammadu Buhari, would spend N400m on the purchase of vehicles for the nation’s former Presidents and their deputies in 2017.
According to Ceoafrica, the figure formed part of the N9.882bn budgeted for the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation for the year.
According to the details of the 2017 Appropriation Bill currently before the National Assembly obtained yesterday, N280.099m was budgeted for the purchase of vehicles for seven former Presidents and Heads of State.
Further details showed that N120.090m would be used to procure vehicles for four former Vice-Presidents and former Chiefs of General Staff.
The nation’s seven living former heads of government include: Gen. Yakubu Gowon (retd.), Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, Alhaji Shehu Shagari, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida (retd.), Chief Ernest Shonekan, Gen. Abdusalami Abubakar (retd.), and former President Goodluck Jonathan.
The four living former Vice-Presidents and former Chiefs of General Staff are former Vice-President Alex Ekwueme, Commodore Ebitu Ukiwe (retd.), Gen. Oladipo Diya (retd.), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and former Vice-President, Namadi Sambo.
The budget details did not indicate the number of vehicles that would be bought for each of the former leaders and the brands of the vehicles were not disclosed.
Apart from the leaders, the office of the SGF would also buy N32m vehicles for offices and units in the office.
The government would also spend a total of N170m on the nation’s Independence Day which holds every 1st of October and Democracy Day celebrations which holds every 29th of May, since both ceremonies have not been marked lavishly since the current administration’s inception.
The office is also expected to spend N1.322bn on the procurement and installation of security system across selected Ministries, Departments and Agencies, even though the number of MDAs that will benefit from the procurement were not disclosed in the details.
The office would also spend N104.586m on what it called support and maintenance of e-council document management; it would also spend N290m on electronic document and content management system and another N45m on electronic document management and archival system in the OSGF.
Upgrading and maintenance of Council Chambers Conference System would gulp N55m, while N35m would be spent on one Xerox D125 photocopy machine, coupled with N20.8m on purchase of 52 laptop computers with N54.35m for the purchase of equipment for the production of staff identity cards and installation of file tracking system, and N5m for the OSGF website.
Another N3.8m is budgeted for the purchase of what is called multi-functional photocopy machine for the Procurement Department and N29.5m for archival project Phases I, II and III for cabinet secretariat document and file organisation.
