A financial recklessness scandal is rocking Adamawa State after it emerged that 21 local government chairmen splashed over ₦600 million of public funds sending their wives on a so-called “leadership training” trip to Turkey.
Labour Party presidential candidate Peter Obi tore into the extravagance, branding it a “mockery of governance” at a time when children are out of school, teachers are underpaid, and pensioners are left to suffer.
“I have just read the disturbing report that the wives of 21 local government chairmen in Adamawa State were sponsored with public funds to travel to Turkey under the guise of leadership training,” Obi fumed on X.
He accused the council bosses of mocking the people they were elected to serve:
“Today, while our children at the basic education level — whose education is the responsibility of local governments—are out of school, and those in school lack classrooms and teachers, while LGA pensioners are likely owed, and teachers continue to struggle under economic hardship, it is disheartening that scarce resources are channelled into frivolities such as foreign trips for the wives of local government chairmen who hold no public office, at an estimated cost of about ₦600 million in public funds.”
ALGON’s Adamawa boss Suleiman Toungo shamelessly defended the scandal, saying the women needed the training to “offer useful advice on governance.”
“Such money, if directed at women micro-credit at an average of ₦100,000 each for women-led micro businesses, would uplift 6,000 women—about 300 women in each LGA—which would be far more impactful than this wasteful spending.”
Obi said the half-a-billion naira could have built 30 classroom blocks, directly changing lives instead of funding junkets for political spouses.
Even as he praised Governor Ahmadu Fintiri’s infrastructure push in Yola, Obi warned that Adamawa is still desperate for investments in education, healthcare and poverty reduction.
“Anything short of that is an abuse of office and should not be condoned; this is not only a glaring case of waste but a mockery of the very essence of governance,” Obi decried.
