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Buhari’s administration impoverishing Nigerians – CUPP
The Coalition of United Political Parties (CUPP) on Tuesday accused President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration of impoverishing Nigerians through the increase in Value- Added Tax (VAT), borrowings and other policies.
The coalition said it had therefore, through one of its alliance party members, Action Peoples Party (APP), instituted a legal action in the Federal High Court to challenge the federal government’s actions.
The group’s spokesman, Imo Ugochinyere, who disclosed this in a statement, said the reason it filed the suit was to bring respite to citizens who had been traumatized and impoverished by the current government.
The suit, he said was filed before the Federal High Court presided over by Justice Ekwo Ekwo of Court 5. He added that the court had since commenced hearing in the litigation.
Ugochinyere said: “We have asked the Federal High Court to determine three questions and we are optimistic that they will all be answered in our favour as they are all issues of law and public interest.
“For a government to clearly go outside the direct provisions of the law just to (inflict) suffering on citizens and tax them out of existence is condemnable, arbitrary, undemocratic, tyrannical, capricious, oppressive, cruel and indeed must be rejected and resisted.
“Is it not worrisome that a government that has failed for six months to implement a new minimum wage regime which would have barely lifted the purchasing power of workers has since that time increased VAT, agreed to return toll gates, embarked on unbridled borrowing, increased electricity tariff without commensurate increase in electricity supply, uses a quarter of the budget to service debts and imposes other jankara economic policies and wicked taxes all aimed at tightening the economic space of the common citizen while they live in affluence and extravagance including abandoning governance to unelected hands and junketing from one foreign country to another.”
The federal government had said in September it would increase VAT from 5 per cent to 7.5 per cent.
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