PDP passes the buck after election

*President’s group blames party
*Party blames president’s group

The Peoples Democratic Party has been doing a stocktaking of its electoral defeat by the opposition All Progressives Congress, passing the buck as it were.

While President Goodluck Jonathan has gotten a report of the election from his campaign group, and aides are calling for the heads of the party officials, the National Working Committee of the party has embarked on another course, blaming the president’s group for the party’s failure.

‘’We cannot be held responsible for the failure,’’ said Olisa Metuh, the party’s publicity secretary said.

Metuh also attributed the inability of the party`s leaders in the north to garner support for its candidates in the region, to the hate campaigns by party officials prior to the elections.

“While we are not holding any excuse for them, we cannot be held accountable for issues that were generated which worked against our candidates in the North. All Nigerians know what happened,’’ he said.

He added that if the party’s presidential campaign in 2003 and 2007 had ran hate campaign against Odumegu Ojukwu who contested the presidency with former President Olusegun Obasonjo and late Musa Yar`Adua, respectively, the South-East would have voted against it.

He disclosed that the NWC did not play any significant role in the party`s 2015 presidential campaign.

He added that members of NWC did not share part of the presidential campaign funds as was being speculated, nor were they involved in the disbursement of funds.

The party’s spokesman maintained that the committee members had no knowledge of how the money voted for the campaign was spent.

He explained that the N30 million allegedly paid to NWC members, with President Goodluck Jonathan`s approval, was meant for furniture, medical and other backlog of allowances.

This, he said, was accruable ‎to the members of the NWC in the last three years.

According to Metuh, the PDP generated about N9 billion from the sales of Expression of Interest and Nomination Forms to aspirants to various elective offices on the platform of the party in 2014.

Out of this, he said, the party donated N500 million to Prof. Jerry Gana-led National Presidential Campaign Fund Raising dinner in December, 2014.

He also said that the NWC gave out N100 million to each of the 29 gubernatorial candidates of the party for the April 11 governorship election.

“We sponsored our House of Assembly candidates. The money was passed though the governors or through ministers and gubernatorial candidates in states where PDP had no sitting governor,” he said.

Metuh added that the NWC, however, got approval from Jonathan for all its spending and expressed readiness of the committee to make its account public.

“For the avoidance of doubt, we wish to state categorically that this national leadership has remained very transparent in all its dealing since coming into office.

“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.

“We state clearly that we have not been given any money, rather this NWC generated billions of naira from the sales of forms from where we funded our candidates for governorship and State Assembly elections in all the states of the federation,’’ he said.

This, Metuh added, was in addition to funds released to key leaders, including NWC and Board of Trustee members, to prosecute the campaigns in their various areas.

“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.”

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.

“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.”