The Presidency has categorically denied the report that the total cost of President Muhammadu Buhari’s trip to the United States, cost an estimated 2.2 billion.
According to the presidency, the figure was grossly over-exaggerated as the cost of the trip to the Nigerian treasury was less than N220 million.
Garba Shehu, Senior Special Assistant to the President (Media & Publicity), made the clarification in a press release made available on Wednesday, August 5.
Shehu stated that President Buhari’s son, Yusuf, did not receive any estacode for the trip, while adding that the five governors who were in the delegation, paid for their airfare and permanent secretaries and other senior government officials only received their entitlements.
The statement said in part: “Our attention has been drawn to an editorial published in the Nigerian Pilot of August 2, 2015 and an earlier report in which the total cost of President Muhammadu Buhari’s recent trip to the U.S. was estimated at N2.2 billion.
It is very sad that in this age of free-flowing information and in this era of change, a media organisation would make itself available as a vehicle to peddle a lie of such low and ignominious quality.
Contrary to the newspaper’s assertions, the total cost of the trip to the Nigerian taxpayer was at the most minimal, in line with the policy of this administration to cut waste and extravagance. In point of fact, the total amount expended on the trip by the Office of the Presidentamounted to nothing near ten per cent of the speculated figure.
Owing to the free accommodation provided by the host government, all the personal staff who accompanied the President on the trip received reduced allowances. His son, Yusuf, received neither allowances nor estacode. The five Governors on the trip each paid his own way.
Permanent Secretaries who traveled on the delegation did so in accordance with extant rules and none of them exceeded their estacode entitlements. Apart from the Nigerian Pilot’s mischievous mathematics, it is shortsighted and misleading of the newspaper to have claimed that President Buhari’s trip to the U.S. achieved nothing. Nigerian-US relations had suffered severely over the past few years.”
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