Southern, middle belt leaders accuse Osinbajo of vote buying,

The forum of the southern and middle belt leaders have pointed accusing fingers at the vice president, Prof Yemi Osinbajo for going around engaging in “advance vote buying” with the tradermoni scheme.

Leaders of the group met in Abuja on Wednesday to deliberate on issues affecting the nation and a communiqué was signed.

At the meeting were Yinka Odumakin for South West; Bassey Ewa-Henshaw for South South; Isuwa Dogo for Middle Belt and Chigozie Ogbu for South East.

TraderMoni is purportedly designed to help petty traders expand their trade through the provision of collateral free loans of N10,000. The loans are repayable within a period of six months.

The group said the Muhammadu Buhari administration through the vice president was using the scheme to woo the electorates ahead of the 2019 general elections, hence, demanded that the scheme be stopped.

The communiqué reads, “Meeting expressed utter disappointment in the Vice-President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Prof Yemi Osinbajo for his continued corruption of the electorates in a funny scheme named ‘Tradermoni’,”

It berated the vice president for using the same skills prior to the Osun governorship election.

“We noted his odious outing with this corrupt act shortly before the Osun governorship election when he went to dole out cash to would -be voters and distributing forms in which beneficiaries were asked to fill in their PVC details and phone number.

“A few days back, he took the perverse scheme to Lagos accompanied by the Governor of Lagos and the APC governorship candidate in Lagos state, an act that totally betrayed the political manipulation of the polity with pecuniary tools.

“It is rather unfortunate that a Professor and Senior Advocate of Nigeria is not ashamed to be doing this open ‘see and buy’ ahead of elections while he continues to preach virtues when convenient.

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“We demand immediate suspension of this scheme in the manner the VP is going about it presently as it shames the whole anti-corruption campaign of the administration. It is pure bribery of voters.”

The Buhari administration launched a new initiative under the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP), called the Trader Moni, which it said, will empower two million petty traders before the end of the year.

The scheme would grant a minimum of 30,000 loans in each state of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory.

Under the scheme, beneficiaries can get access to a higher facility ranging from N15,000 to N50,000 when they repay N10,000 within the stipulated time period.

The group chided the police for their response following a recent invasion of the residence of the deputy senate president, Ike Ekweremadu,

The police had said that the attack on Ekweremadu and his family in the early hours of Tuesday was a mere case of burglary against the assassination attempt he alleged.

Ekweremadu later threatened to release footage of the attack.

“Meeting condemned the irresponsible response of the police to the recent terror visited on the home of the Deputy Senate President, Senator Ike Ekweremadu.

“Accounts by the DSP showed that police did not respond to (the) distress call and visited the scene of crime several hours after the attackers struck at his residence.

“We were shocked to see police spokesman concluding the incident was a burglary attack within a few hours of little or no investigation in the order the current IGP dismissed the arsonist attack that claimed the lives of Kano REC and his family in 2015 as mere accident shortly after visiting the scene of crime.

It advised the police to embrace professionalism in handling related matters.

The group also expressed its displeasure over the spate of violence going on in different parts of the country without adequate response from the state.

“We are worried by the Killings in Kaduna, Plateau, Shiites in Abuja as well as kidnappings in Delta State and other parts of the country,” the leaders said.

“We are not shy to say that the government has failed in its primary responsibility of securing the lives and property of citizens.

“A Government that cannot rise up to the challenge of securing the polity is not fit to be in office.”

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