Suddenly, President Jonathan is an orphan; his legion of supporters and praise singers has dwindled greatly since he lost the presidential election to General Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress. If the President did not comprehend the meaning of fair-weather friends before, now he will surely do. It’s the sad part of human nature that we only regard those at the top, the moment the rug is pulled under you; you are alone, all alone.
And the President is all alone as the National Working Committee of the Peoples Democratic Party is dissociating themselves from the shenanigans, the vicious hate and distasteful campaign against Buhari prelude of the election. No PDP member was sane enough at that time, now they are all playing ostrich after the chicken has come home to roast.
Below is a full briefing of National Publicity Secretary of the party, Chief Olisa Metuh, at a press conference in Abuja on Monday.
He explained that the erroneous belief by the Jonathan campaign team that it could denigrate a respected statesman revered in the North, instead on dwelling on issues, cost the party critical votes in parts of the North.
Metuh equally said the campaign for the sacking of the NWC, which was being orchestrated by some of those responsible for the party’s woes, was immoral and illogical.
Metuh said, “We (NWC) 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.
“Let me say this. In 2003, President Obasanjo ran an election against Odumegwu-Ojukwu in the South-East. In 2007, Yar’Adua ran election against Ojukwu. I can tell you, if PDP had engaged in name calling or abused Ojukwu in any way, PDP would have lost the elections in the South-East.
“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 candidates because of the hate campaign that was generated, we are not answerable for it.
“While I am not holding any excuse for them, 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.”
Reacting to news reports that the PDP NWC members shared part of the presidential campaign funds among themselves, Metuh said:
“I can tell you from my own records that we generated billions. I think we generated more than N7bn, N8bn or N9bn. We generated more than N7bn and we generated a lot of money.
“The first initial donation we made was half a billion (N500m) 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 that money. It was a Jerry Gana Committee and they handled it and nobody can question us for that.
“There is no governorship candidate that received less than N100m from this Working Committee; and the House of Assembly candidates across the country got money from us. It depends on the state.
“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, in some states, we gave to the governors or directly to the candidates of the party.
“We sponsored our House of Assembly candidates. The money was passed through the governors or through ministers and gubernatorial candidates in states where PDP has no sitting governor.
“For the avoidance of doubt, we wish to state categorically that this national leadership has remained very transparent in all its dealings since coming into office.
“No NWC member has been involved in any way in any sleaze or embezzlement of party funds. Also, no member of the NWC has ever been accused of embezzlement of funds in any ministry, department or agencies of government at any level whatsoever.”
Allegations that members of the NWC received N30m each
“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 the governorship and state assembly elections in all the states of the federation 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 law.”
