•••As Aisha Yesufu Gives Details On Party’s Expenditures
The crisis troubling the Labour Party took a dramatic turn with the Presidential Candidate in the 2023 election, Peter Obi, calling for a probe into the alleged diversion of 3.5 billion naira by the National Chairman, Julius Abure.
The National Treasurer, Ms Oluchi Opara, earlier in the week, at a press conference accused Abure of lack of financial transparency.
Oluchi alleged that the diverted fund form part of monies raised from the sale of nomination forms and fundraising activities in the build-up to the 2023 general election.
But the National Working Committee (NWC) on the behest of the National Chairman, on Wednesday slammed a six months suspension on Opara.
Obiorah Ifoh, the party’s National Publicity Secretary told newsmen at the Wednesday briefing that Oparah was a mole who was being used by aggrieved breakaway groups to cause disaffection in the party.
On the NWC’s decision to suspend her, Ifoh alleged that the embattled National Treasurer failed to honour an invitation by the party’s NWC to resolve the crisis.
He went on to accuse her of greed, claiming that she demanded a house in the highbrow Asokoro part of Abuja, a car and a huge financial gift as a settlement package.
However, Oparah in her response indicated that she would challenge the suspension in court, as the NWC’s action was premeditated, especially that those who took the action knew she was not in Abuja to meet the less than 12 hour-10am Wednesday deadline to appear before a panel.
She added that they had also removed her from the WhatsApp platform, hence cannot know what is happening.
Recall that on Tuesday while speaking on Arise TV’s ‘Good Morning Show’, Oparah accused the Abure-led NWC of working hand-in-hand with the People’s Democratic Party’s (PDP) government in Edo State.
In his intervention on Thursday, Obi insisted for an Independent Auditor to resolve the situation.
The former Anambra State governor demanded a thorough probe of the allegations against Abure.
At the Thursday media parley to render the account of the 2023 Obi-Datti Presidential campaign organisation funding, he stressed that “For the party (LP), I am a member of the party and they have chosen to say that I am the leader. What we need to do in the party and I have discussed it with the leadership is that we must now appoint a reputable audit firm to audit and be able to deal with the account of the party.
“When I am involved anywhere, money must be transparent. So the allegations and counter allegations now must be thoroughly investigated and verified and we would reconcile it and know exactly what we do,” Obi said.
At the Thursday’s briefing, Obi also appealed to various support groups or individuals or parties that received funding to support the campaign, for which they were grateful, to account to those they received it from.
He said, “Because there are some people, like support groups, there are some people even abroad who collected monies that they are going to use in the north and everywhere. We were not stringent that everything you collect must come to us, but we want whatever is collected to be accounted for.
This is why we are appealing to the public to let us know.”
On her part, Aisha Yesufu, she said they spent N744.5m on litigation, received N595.9m from Nigerians, Yesufu who was the Chairman of the Fundraising Team of the Campaign Organisation said that it spent over N744,500,000.00 in litigation in courts over the 2023 presidential election.
She also said that it received donations totaling N595,976,994.00 from Nigerians.
“Accountability and transparency are very critical and important; that is why we asked people to donate so that we could come back to them to explain how their money was judiciously used.
We thank everyone who donated in cash and kindness. From the donations from citizens, we received N595,976,994.
“This is the money we raised from the four accounts that we have talked about. We also received N8,000,000 from the candidate himself (Peter Obi).
“We designed a strategic blueprint focused on channeling the movement energy and support for Peter Obi and Datti Ahmed with different support groups.
“We provided direct and indirect support to over a hundred support groups across all 36 states in Nigeria.
“We also deployed media-related campaigns that reached over 11 million people, leveraging over 40 radio stations, community outreach, and social media.
“We would have loved to use Televisions and all of that, but because of our financial constraints, we were mindful of being judicious in our usage of the funds that we received.
So, out of these things, campaign materials worth N258,374,330.00 were procured and distributed across the 36 States and also in Abuja.
Media and radio broadcasting was at the cost of N16,432,867.00.
“For the election promotion expenses, we had N10,808,948.00. For Polling Unit Agents, we spent N324,381,700.00. And then, of course, we had bank charges of N1,750,544.00. We also had administrative charges of N477,000.00.
“We deployed N744,500,000.00 to cover legal expenses. And then, in campaign and election activities, we had over N28,500,000.00.
On the issue of legal fees, remember what I said earlier: We had N800,000,000.00 that the candidate himself brought,” Yesufu said.
“We had a crowdfunding campaign where Nigerians were asked to donate to the Obi/Datta campaign for the 2023 general election.
“Today we are having that campaign fundraising report presentation. Accountability and transparency is very critical and it is very important.
“At any time we ask people to donate and they do so willingly. It is very important to come back to them and show them how their money was judiciously used.
“The Mandate of the crowd fundraising team was as follows,His Excellency Peter Obi gave the following mandate to the team and that was to raise funding from Nigerians using the campaign’s official account and to ensure funds are judiciously.
*INDEPENDENTNG.