The latest in our newsroom indicates that a former governor has been fingered
in the spate of embezzlement going on in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Presidential
Campaign Organisation, reports ITRealms.
The former governor has been seen
with President Goodluck Jonathan at several rallies and functions of recent.
The former governor, who has an
interest in a new generation bank where he was chairman at some point, attended
a meeting with the President and a few others in January, where Jonathan
ordered one of the prominent female ministers in his cabinet to release
"some billions of naira to him" to oil the machinery of the campaign
team, a source said.
The source said the money was
"cornered" from some "big" government contractors.
The strategy is what is called
"decoy" in government circles, where money to finance rallies, campaigns
and advertisements will come from private individuals and not government
officials.
The former governor has some people
working with him to disburse the fund but he and a principal officer in the
Presidency are alleged to have cornered a substantial part of the fund running
into billions of naira.
The money was said to have been
first lodged in the bank where the former governor has interest.
The idea is to get commission on the
fund and, if possible, "seize" or sit on the money till after
election with the hope that once election is over, the money
"expires".
Part of the money was meant to
settle some opinion leaders critical of President Jonathan in the six
geopolitical zones.
But it was learnt this was yet to be
done.
It was gathered that this was why
Jonathan himself had to come to the South West to personally "settle some
people" because he does not trust any of his aides brokering negotiations
for him as most of such money allegedly ended in private pockets.
The lid on the misappropriation of
the fund was blown open by a governorship aspirant in one of the South West
states, who was part of the team but felt shortchanged.
A livid Jonathan was said to have
summoned a meeting where an outspoken Presidency official was shouted down by
the President for being part of the scam.
“He (the outspoken official) would
have been fired immediately, but the President was advised not to do it now
that election is just a few days away,” the source said.
Jonathan was said to have asked how
the money was spent and "all sorts of names and companies were reeled out
as having benefited from the money. Full page advert money for newspapers was
doubled and tripled just to cover their tracks.
"For example, they told the
President that full page advert for Punch, ThisDay, Guardian is now N2 million
'political special rate', centrespread is N6 million and wrap around N70
million because of the election.
"But some media people like a
woman managing a magazine at the meeting knew they were lying but surprisingly
kept sealed lips. Cost of television commercials was also increased.
"But the problem is that when
the money spent was totalled, it was not even up to one quarter of what was
released to the team. It is like all of them know that Jonathan may lose the
election. So, they are just trying to take whatever they can take before
election day."
The embezzlement tale has also
affected the media team as millions of naira have allegedly been stolen.
The over N150 million said to have
been budgeted for online advertisement remains unaccounted for as earlier
reported.
The source added: "The major
problem is that nobody can really discipline the affected officers because the
sleaze cuts across all the teams in the campaign organisation – procurement,
media, logistics, mobilisation, security, etc. They are all helping
themselves."
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