‘We didn’t squander N12bn’

Acting National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Prince Uche Secondus has reacted to the accusation by the party’s workers that the leadership of the party squandered over N12 billion realized by the party from the sales of forms before the last general election.

Secondus, at a briefing in Abuja, contended, that the actual amount was not N12 billion but a little over N11b, and that “10 per cent of the money went to the state chapters, five per cent to the zonal chapters and another five per cent to local government chapters of the party.

“Another 15 percent was expended on assignments by various party functionaries and the rest was used to fund our campaigns. We raised money and we used the money for elections. We don’t need to go into details”.

Protesting workers at the party secretariat have been at war with the Secondus-led National Working Committee (NWC) following the alleged embezzlement of the money, which they said was partly responsible for the poor outing of the PDP in the general election.

Senate Minority Leader Godswill Akpabio, who led the PDP Senate caucus to the briefing, explained why the party must reduce the secretariat workers.

Read also: Workers take on PDP over salary cut

Akpabio said: “We can no longer run to the Villa for cash so we don’t have the wherewithal to maintain that large number of secretariat workers.

“The workers should understand that they are in a master-servant relationship in which you cannot force an unwilling master to keep a recalcitrant servant. We are definitely going to downsize”.

Akpabio and Secondus complained about what they described as “harassment and intimidation” of the party’s ex-governors and former ministers who served under the Goodluck Jonathan administration.

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