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| President Jonathan |
By John Alechenu
The National Working Committee of the Peoples
Democratic Party has said the hate campaign against Muhammadu Buhari of the All
Progressives Congress by the President Goodluck Jonathan campaign team played a
huge part in PDP’s woeful outing at the last general elections.
It also accused the team of shutting
out its members from Jonathan’s electioneering after receiving about N500m out
of the N7bn generated from the sale of forms to the aspirants.
The National Publicity Secretary of the party,
Olisa Metuh, told journalists at a news conference in Abuja on
Monday, that apart from the N500m, the Jerry Gana -led fund raising campaign
committee generated about N21bn which it spent without involving the NWC
members.
He said that the belief by the Jonathan campaign
team that it could denigrate a respected statesman like Buhari, who
is reverred in the North, instead of dwelling on issues, cost the party a lot
of votes in that part of the country.
Metuh stated that the calls for the sack of the
NWC members by those he claimed were responsible for PDP’s poor
performance at the polls, were immoral and stood logic on its head.
He explained that a greater chunk of
the N7bn generated from the sale of nomination and expression of
interest forms was used to sponsor the party’s candidates at nearly
all levels.
The PDP spokesman said, “We (NWC members) did not
lead the party to failure. We were not involved in the campaigns and our advice
was ignored. If we had handled the campaign, Mr. President would have won the
election. We cannot be held responsible when our advice was ignored.
“I can tell you from my own records that we
generated billions. I think we generated more than N7bn or N8bn or N9bn. We
generated more than N7bn; we generated a lot of money.
“The first initial donation we made was half a
billion to the presidential campaign funds even though we were not involved in
raising funds for the presidential campaign.
“They generated campaign funds up to N21bn. The
party was not involved in it and the party cannot account for it because we
were not involved in the disbursement of that money. It was a Jerry Gana-led
committee that handled it and nobody can question us for that.
“There is no governorship candidate that received
less than N100m from this NWC. The House of Assembly candidates across the
country got money from us too. The amount such people got depended on their
states.
“These monies were given to some ministers and
some people to distribute to the states. In some states, it was the campaign
coordinators that we gave and in others, we gave to the
governors or directly to the candidates of the party.
“For those of us in the North where the type of
campaign that we generated made it impossible for our leaders in the North to
garner support for our candidate (Jonathan) because of the hate campaign that
was generated we are not answerable for it.
“We cannot be held accountable for issues that
were generated that worked against our candidate in the North. This is clear;
all Nigerians knew what happened.”
Among those that strongly attacked Buhari during
the campaign were the First Lady, Patience Jonathan, and the Ekiti
State Governor, Ayo Fayose.
Responding to allegations that members of the NWC
received N30m each, the PDP spokesman said, “We state clearly that
we have not been given any money. Rather, this NWC generated billions of naira
from the sale of forms from where we funded our candidates for governorship and
state assembly elections in all the states of the federation. This is in
addition to funds released to key leaders, including NWC and BoT members to
prosecute the campaigns in their various areas.
“The NWC is willing and ready to make this
account public in line with the Freedom of Information Act.”
Metuh also explained that several attempts had
been made by some “divisive elements to portray the NWC in a bad light
following the party’s defeat at the polls.
He recalled that in the attempt to discredit the
NWC, the “divisive elements” pushed out a series of misleading information to
the public that the party leadership mismanaged the presidential
campaign funds and hence the PDP poor performance.
The PDP spokesman added, “When this wicked and
baseless allegation was debunked by the NWC which publicly clarified that it
was not involved in the handling of the campaign and its funding, and that such
were exclusively managed by the Presidential Campaign Organisation appointed by
the President, these divisive elements, in their desperation, came up with
another allegation that the PDP leadership embezzled funds belonging to the
party.
“Even after the NWC also debunked this despicable
allegation showing that the party’s funds were judiciously appropriated for our
state election campaigns, this group resorted to labelling the NWC with
attempts to instigate President Jonathan, the PDP governors and other
well-meaning members of our party against the national leadership.”
He also said that the “divisive elements”
embarked on sponsored publications accusing the NWC members of
sharing money generated from the sale of forms to aspirants.
Metuh stressed that the NWC members had remained
very transparent in all their dealings since coming into office.
When contacted, the Political Adviser
to the President, Rufai Alkali, said “I
don’t have details of the said briefing” by Metuh.
Attempts to reach the spokesman for the Jonathan
campaign organisation, Femi Fani-Kayode, were unsuccessful as calls
to his mobile phone at 7:04pm indicated that it was switched off.
Efforts to reach Gana were also futile as of the
time of filing this report.
Calls to his mobile telephone number indicated
that it was switched off. The first call was at 8: 35pm, the second was at 8:
38pm and the third was at 8:54pm.
Culled from
Punch newspaper
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