The People’s
Democratic Party has alleged that
an unnamed leader of the All Progressives Congress got a contract of
N84 billion from the suspended Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria, Mallam Sanusi Lamido.
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 N5
billion consultancy contract while Sanusi was in office.
The National
Publicity Secretary of the ruling party, Chief Olisa Metuh, made the allegation
at a press briefing in Abuja on Thursday.
Metuh was
commenting on the launch 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 benefited immensely from the regime of sleaze that took place under
Sanusi.
“A
fraudulent N84 billion contract was awarded to a leader of the party while
another N5 billion 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, typical of all anti-democratic
coalitions. He claimed that the manifesto lacked character, depth and that it
addressed no issue at all.
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 may be benefiting
from the mayhem and knows more than meets the eye 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 100days of APC leadership,
Nigerians did ask if they knew the characters in 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.”
Taking the
APC to task on job creation and war on corruption which the party projected as
cardinal on its manifesto, Metuh said the APC has no credible recipe for job
creation nor has it shown the strength of character to fight corruption more
than the PDP does at the moment.
He said,
“The PDP created anti-corruption agencies – the ICPC, the EFCC 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 on corruption as
senior party leaders as well relations have at one time or another been made to
face the law on charges of corruption.“
According to
the him, nothing showcases the anti-democratic ambience of the APC than its
alleged inability to conduct what he described as properly constituted
congresses and convention to elect its substantive officers almost a year after
formation, thus showing that “the strange bedfellows have merged but the
structures are refusing to integrate, hence, crisis and disagreements in its
ranks.”
