CUPP Urges Lawmakers to Boycott Buhari’s Budget Presentation

CUPP Urges Lawmakers to Boycott Buhari’s Budget Presentation

By Udora Orizu in Abuja

The Coalition of United Political Parties (CUPP) has called on the opposition lawmakers in the Senate and House of Representatives to display the highest level of patriotism by staging a mass walkout on President Buhari during his scheduled budget presentation.

This call to completely boycott the exercise as a show of resentment and condemnation of the the over three- year reign of Buhari was contained in a statement issued yesterday by the national spokesperson of CUPP, Ikenga Ugochinyere.

He said the coalition holds the view that sitting down and listening to a man who has led several assaults on the institutions of Nigeria’s constitutional governance is tacit support for his many sins against the country.

“A man who has refused to implement previous budgets passed since 2015 till date; a man who has committed gross misconduct and obstruction of justice by refusing to obey judgments of courts, including ECOWAS court; a man who disrespects and treats like tissue papers resolutions of parliament; a man whose IG of Police frames political opponents of the president; a man who promised to fix the economy and turned Nigeria into the poverty capital of the world; a man who commands security forces that have no respect for the lives of the citizens; a man who has failed to fight corruption squarely and fairly but rather protects the biggest looters of our nation’s treasury under his watch; a man who has lost control of his government as alleged by his wife with two unidentified and unelected men running presidential powers under him,” Ugochinyere alleged.

He said the call on the lawmakers to boycott the budget presentation was hinged on economic and political reasons, refusal by the president to substantially implement previous budgets from 2015 to 2018, which led to rise in poverty, waste and sufferings of Nigerians and brazen refusal to sign the Electoral Act Amendment Bill that will guarantee free and fair election, reduce rigging and avert bloody electoral contest.

He listed other reasons to include infliction of poverty on Nigerians as a result of incompetent leadership, the sudden rise in insecurity and Boko Haram insurgency,  refusal to sign Petroleum Industry Governance Bill (PIGB) which would have raised revenue for Nigerians and protected the Niger Delta people and their environment and refusal to attend the burial of the gallant Nigerian soldiers, killed in Metele, Borno State on the same day Service Chiefs left their duty post and were attending his campaign flag-off in Aso Rock.

CUPP urged the lawmakers to ensure that they match the walkout staged by their colleagues in 2013 in St Kitts and Nevis budget boycott, the Pakistani budget presentation boycott of 2017 and the walkout on President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda by the lawmakers in 2018 over his growing acts of impunity.

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