PDP crisis: GEJ’s men bite NCW, allege swindling of party members

The PDP crisis is definitely not going away very soon, as it gets deeper and deeper every day with both sides involved in the issues trying to outdo each other, and bring down the perceived enemy.

Only a few days ago, members of the party’s NWC hit back in the attempt to have them removed, as they accused some aides of President Goodluck Jonathan of using their closeness with the number one citizen to foment trouble within the party.

Now the other side has come out smoking, as associates of the president have released documentary evidence that members of the NWC stole funds belonging to the party shortly after President Jonathan lost the presidential election on March 28, 2015.

Two close associates of the president spoke to SaharaReporters on what one of them described as “shameless stealing of party funds by officials entrusted with running the affairs of the party”, and that the party’s NWC members shelled out over a quarter of billion naira in unexplained fees to themselves on April 8, 2015.

According to the report, another set of documents shows that the PDP also compelled delegates to its annual convention to pay N10,000 each into the private accounts of Marufi Nigeria Limited. One of the Presidency sources described the company as a fraudulent front linked to a top member of the NWC.

The NWC reacted by insisting that no money was given to it and that it rather spent its own internally generated funds to sponsor the candidates of the party.

National publicity secretary of the party, Olisa Metuh, who addressed a press conference in Abuja on Monday, said the NWC was never given any money for the campaigns and denied embezzling such money.

He however admitted that NWC members received the said N30 Million, which he said included their housing, furniture and other allowances that have not been past for the past two years.

According to him, the NWC is willing and ready to make its account public in line with the Freedom of Information law.

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