Former vice-presidential candidate Peter Obi says he does not see the need for the office of first lady.
Mr Obi said on Tuesday at an annual event organised by Foursquare Gospel Church in Lagos that the yearly budgetary allocation for the office should be stopped because it increases cost of governance in the country.
He said such allocations should be used to fund education and health to halt medical tourism overseas.
“The wives of the president, governors and by extension the local government councils did not stand for any election, never campaigned, so on what basis should the office exist in the first place,” he said.
“With billions being voted for it, it calls for question from which political trajectory are we hinging our dispensation to allow such to go on without question.
“We are confronted with low revenue and borrowing to fund budgets and debt servicing not to talk of teeming youths without jobs to contend with.”
The former Anambra State governor added that with the routine staff attached to the offices of first ladies across the country, the chunk of the nation’s funds goes into servicing unproductive set of people whose existence should have been queried.
In his remark, general overseer of the church Rev. Sam Aboyeji said that the religious body would continue to focus on areas of the polity that required attention for a better society.
