The minister disclosed this on Sunday that he inaugurated 10 firefighting trucks for the Federal Airports Authority, FAAN.
Nigerian Twitter users have tackled the aviation minister, Hadi Sirika for allegedly spending a whopping sum of N12 billion to acquire 10 firefighting trucks for airports.
The minister disclosed this on Sunday that he inaugurated 10 firefighting trucks for the Federal Airports Authority, FAAN.
In his post on Twitter, Sirika revealed that FAAN had not bought firefighting trucks in 15 years.
“Just commissioned 10 Firefighting trucks, the total cost of over 12Bn Naira. More to come in due course. Safety has been the Buhari focus in Aviation since 2015. Hitherto, FAAN has not bought new trucks in 15 years,” the minister posted.
Meanwhile, a search by SaharaReporters revealed that the most delectable ARFF truck on the planet is the Striker, built by the Oshkosh Truck Corporation in Wisconsin which costs $675,000 which is equivalent to N311 million at the official exchange rate of N460 to $1 and about N506 million at the parallel market rate of N750 to $1.
Reacting to this, the African Action Congress presidential candidate in the 2023 election, Omoyele Sowore criticised the minister and the Muhammadu Buhari Government for the manner in which they are mismanaging public funds amid debt deficit.
“Wow! you mean you bought a single fire engine for over $2 million each. Wonders shall never cease. You and @mbuhari really finished Nigeria! #RevolutionNow,” Sowore said.
Another Twitter user, Val Chekwas said, “Spent the last hours researching how much fire trucks cost, the expensive high end trucks costs $650,000 (which Nigeria never gets the best, I can bet this are used trucks too).
“NYC fire fighting trucks cost $550k each, what truck did you buy for $2.8m.”
“You sir and your cohorts are thieves. Give the spec of this truck and what makes it N1.2B each. the ridiculous broad daylight robbery of our coffers,” he added.
To Gbolahan, the level of corruption under Buhari’s government has been too obvious.
“Under GEJ funds were syphoned codedly and in secret Buhari came and told them, "you don't need to hide it, I got you,” he tweeted.
“This is absolute madness. How can you buy 10 fire trucks for 12bn Naira @1.2bn each. Fire trucks don’t work well without direct source of water which we don’t have in most places. This looks like a China truck and from my find the one that holds 12000 litres is about 80,000$. Why would you pay 1.2bn Naira for one truck? This is insane,” another user, So-so def said.
Meanwhile, the Debt Management Office estimated the country's total domestic indebtedness at N21,551,924,507,448 as of September 30, 2022, while foreign creditors were owed $39.66 billion.
Also, a report by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) shows that in the third quarter (Q3) of 2022, Nigeria’s public debt stock rose to N44.06 trillion ($101.91 billion) from N42.84 trillion ($103.31 billion) recorded in the second quarter (Q2) of the same year.
The data was contained in the NBS' Nigerian Domestic and Foreign Debt Report for Q3 2022 released in Abuja on Tuesday, January 31, 2023.
According to the report, Nigeria’s public debt stock, which includes external and domestic debt, increased by 2.84 per cent in Q3 of 2022.
It said that external debt stood at N17.14 trillion ($39.66 billion) while domestic debt was N26.91 trillion (62.25 billion dollars) within the period under review.
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