By Pascal Ibe

Organizers of EndBadGovernance protest which to kicked off on August, listed a 10-point demand to the Federal Government, according to report by FIJ last week.

Among the demand, I was for Tinubu administration to permanently reduce by 50% the running costs of the executive and National Assembly and fully implement the Oronsaye Report to scrap agencies and reduce the size of government. Scrap hardship, entertainment, and all other NASS allowances and immediately remove all 7,447 projects worth N2.24 trillion inserted by the National Assembly in the 2024 federal budget.

On Sunday in a nationwide broadcast, President Bola Tinubu urged Nigerians to exercise more patient. He equally asked Nigerians end the protests.

However, an X user JC Okechukwu posted a video of the presidency addressing the media and claimed the protests have pushed president Tinubu to slash travel expenses for himself, vice president and offices of the first lady abd VP’s wife by 60%.

The X user shared the video and wrote, “TINUBU slashes travel expenses for President, VP, First and Second Lady’s offices by about 60%. This is coming on the heels of a June 2nd headline on Punch Newspaper that read: “Tinubu, Shettima spend N8.64bn on travel expenses in three months.”

“Despite the devastating economic impact of these wasteful expenditures, most governments across Africa never get to see it until the people revolt.

“It took the Kenyan Gen Z’s protests for Ruto to abolish altogether, the offices of both the First Lady and the Second Lady and did away with all manner of wastefulness that neither his government nor the country needed. And it negs the question: why do they always wait for protests or revolts to do what is right? God help mother Africa!

The post gamered over 19k views and many reposts on Thursday.

Also, another user , June12Mandate shared the same video.

Verification

To ascertain if this is true, a simple Google keyword search, led us to a report by TheCable on January 9, 2024, with caption, “ Tinubu slashes entourage for international, local travel by 60%“

In the story, Ajuri Ngelale, presidential spokesperson, announced that President Bola Tinubu has slashed the number of people on entourages for international and local travel by 60 percent.

President Tinubu has directed that all state entourages be drastically reduced. This is not a request. It is a directive. The office of the president and staff will be affected. Vice-president, appointees are affected,” the presidential spokesperson said.

“By this directive, there will be a slashing of expenditure on official travel by 60 percent.”

He said the president is limited to have 20 number of staff within and outside the country while the vice-president is limited to five aides outside the country and 15 within the country.

“The same applies to the office of first lady while that of the wife of the vice-president is entitled to five international and 10 for local trips.”

He also said every minister is limited to having just four members of staff on any foreign trip while chief executive officers of agencies of government are restricted to two.

Another media organizations in Nigeria, Channels Television reported this also in January this year.

TVC news Nigeria posted the video of this report on it’s YouTube channel in Januar.

Verdict

The claim by the X user is TRUE. but not recent.