by Kolapo Olapoju

The National Working Committee of the Peoples Democratic Party have one request for their fellow party members and Nigerians- Stop! blaming us for the defeat of President Goodluck Jonathan in the presidential election.

In a statement released by the National Publicity Secretary of the party, Olisa Metuh, the NWC attempted to absolve themselves of blame in the failure of PDP in the last general election.

Here are 7 quotes from their effort:

 

1. “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.

 

 

2. “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.

 

 

3. “They(Presidential campaign organisation) 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.

 

 

4. “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.”

 

 

5. “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.”

 

 

 

6. “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.

 

 

7. “The NWC is willing and ready to make this account public in line with the Freedom of Information law. 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, claiming that the leadership embezzled funds belonging to the party.”