By FEMI SALAWU







Hate campaign against Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress by the President Goodluck Jonathan campaign team has been blamed by the National Working Committee of the Peoples Democratic Party as cause of the party’s defeat at the last general elections.

The National Publicity Secretary of the party, Olisa Metuh, made this submission to journalists at a news conference in Abuja on Monday.

He added that apart from the N500m, the Jerry Gana -led fund raising campaign committee generated about N21bn which it spent without involving the NWC members.

He said that the belief by the Jonathan campaign team that it could denigrate a respected statesman like Buhari, who is reverred in the North, instead of dwelling on issues, cost the party a lot of votes in that part of the country.

Among those that strongly attacked Buhari during the campaign were the First Lady, Patience Jonathan, and the Ekiti State Governor, Ayo Fayose.

Metuh expressed his displeasure that the NWC was shut out by the campaign team from Jonathan’s electioneering after receiving about N500m out of the N7bn generated from the sale of forms to the aspirants.

The PDP spokesman said, “We (NWC members) 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.

“I can tell you from my own records that we generated billions. I think we generated more than N7bn or N8bn or N9bn. We generated more than N7bn; we generated a lot of money.

“The first initial donation we made was half a billion to the presidential campaign funds even though we were not involved in raising funds for the presidential campaign.

“They 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 the disbursement of that money. It was a Jerry Gana-led committee that handled it and nobody can question us for that.

“There is no governorship candidate that received less than N100m from this NWC . The House of Assembly candidates across the country got money from us too. The amount such people got depended on their states.

“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 and in others, we gave to the governors or directly to the candidates of the party.

“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 candidate(Jonathan) because of the hate campaign that was generated we are not answerable for it.

“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.”

Defending allegations that members of the NWC received N30m each, the PDP spokesman said, “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 governorship and state assembly elections in all the states of the federation. This is in addition to funds released to key leaders, including NWC and BoT members to prosecute the campaigns in their various areas.

“The NWC is willing and ready to make this account public in line with the Freedom of Information Act.”

Metuh added, “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....

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No-brainer. We warned them then against resorting to such dirty tactics but their footsoldiers were having a field day celebrating Ait, ffk and fayose's acerbic attacks at Buhari and the APC leadership, rather than focusing on the issues. Thank God Nigerians rejected that style of campaigning else it would have set a terrible precedent for future elections in this country.

It's not hate campaign rather the northerners planned to take over government by all means.The PDP governors connived with the northern APC to rig d election.That's is simple truth.