It is unrealistic, says Lai Mohammed
To effectively prosecute the February 14, 2005 presidential election, the All Progressives Congress (APC) is in dire need of N108 billion, New Telegraph can authoritatively report.
To raise this amount, the party, it was exclusively gathered has levied all its 36 state branches N3 billion each while Lagos and Rivers states are to fund states not under APC governors. New Telegraph gathered that the issue of finances for the next year presidential election dominated the meeting of Strategy Committee of the party held on Saturday March 22 at the Lagos State Government House.
The meeting was a follow up to an earlier one held in Abuja by Malam Nasiru el-Rufai, Saliu Lukman, the Director General of the Progressive Governors’ Forum among others on how best to coordinate and prosecute the 2015 Presidential election. The party also identified stakeholders at the various state levels across the country who would coordinate the next year poll.
Ten participants that included Governor Babatunde Fashola of Lagos State, who is also the Chairman of the party’s Strategic Committee; former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Alhaji Aminu Bello Masari; former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Malam Nasir el- Rufai, among others, were in attendance. At the meeting, Fashola noted that funding is most paramount and of immense importance to the successful prosecution of a presidential election.
He reiterated the importance of adequate and appropriate funding for such election, adding that the APC is up against those that have allegedly stolen Nigeria’s oil money for elections. The model for raising the fund, New Telegraph learnt, was mooted by Fashola who suggested that the committee was looking at a minimum total sum of between N2 billion and N3 billion per state.
He was also quoted as saying that Lagos and Rivers states governments have agreed to also fund states that are not under APC governors with the same amount of money on the governorship and presidential election. While speaking at the meeting, el-Rufai noted that President Goodluck Jonathan has no confidence that he would win the presidential election but relying on the Military, Police and State Security Services (SSS) personnel.
The former FCT Minister alleged that Jonathan has been calculating on how to rig the presidential election. He envisaged that based on the direction of politics in the country, the next 10 to 11 months would indeed be very challenging to both the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and APC. In his reaction, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, described the report as untrue.
“This is unrealistic. Where did you get the information from? Definitely, this is not true. Absolute rubbish. This is nothing but part of the choreographed campaign of calumny against APC.
No such campaign can stop us winning the next elections convincingly.
Does it make sense to ask each state to contribute billions of naira? Are we prosecuting a war?”
Source: New Telegraph
