Find the Punch report below...
The Peoples Democratic Party has alleged that an unnamed leader of the All Progressives Congress got a contract of N84bn from the suspended Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria, Mallam Lamido Sanusi.
The party said this was one of the reasons why the opposition party was pained when President Goodluck Jonathan suspended the CBN governor.
Apart from this, the party also alleged that another leader of the APC got another N5bn consultancy contract while Sanusi was in office.
The National Publicity Secretary of the
ruling party, Chief Olisa Metuh (pictured above), made the allegation at a press briefing
in Abuja on Thursday.
Metuh was commenting on the unveiling of the APC manifesto, which he said lacked character.
He said, “The spirited defence for the
suspended Central Bank Governor mounted by the APC was because the
leaders of the party benefitted immensely from Sanusi.
“A fraudulent N84bn contract was awarded
to a leader of the party while another N5bn was paid to another
stalwart of the party as consultancy fee.”
Metuh refused to give the names or the details of the contracts.
When asked for reaction, the Interim National Publicity Secretary of the APC, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, promised to react “soon.”
He said he was attending a summit in Abuja.
Meanwhile, Metuh has described the manifesto which was released on Thursday as a product of what he called “Janjaweed ideology.”
He also described the manifesto as a
roadmap to anarchy which he said was typical of all anti-democratic
coalitions and claimed that the manifesto lacked character, depth and
that it completely addressed no issue.
Metuh said the manifesto ranked security
of lives and property low and that it gave no clue as to its
preparedness to tackle terrorism.
He added that the manifesto was a tacit
acknowledgment that the APC might be benefiting from the mayhem and knew
more than meet the eyes about the spate of terror attacks in the
country.
He said, “When last year in its first
official outing, the leaders of the APC said terrorism in Nigeria would
disappear within 100 days of APC leadership, Nigerians did ask if they
knew the characters in the crime and their sponsors. APC gave silence as
an answer while Nigerians kept wondering.
“Today, the party has released its
manifesto with loud silence on the matter so that Nigerians would not
raise further questions on the face behind the terrorism mask.”
On job creation and war against
corruption which the APC projected as cardinal on its manifesto, Metuh
said the APC had no credible recipe for job creation nor had it shown
the strength of character to fight corruption more than the PDP.
He said, “The PDP created
anti-corruption agencies – the Independent Corrupt Practices and other
related offences Commission, the Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission and established the Freedom of Information Act to further
give teeth to the war on graft.
“The PDP-led Federal Government has also
shown no preferences in its battle against corruption as senior party
leaders as well as relations have at one time or another been made to
face the law on charges of corruption.”
