Onyebuchi Ezigbo in Abuja

As an aftermath of the ongoing probe of the Federal Government’s arms purchase budget, the All Progressives Congress (APC) has hit a brick wall in its attempt to get funding assistance from the Presidency.


The leadership of the ruling party had held a closed-door meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari last Monday to brief him on the state of affairs of the party.
Part of the discussion during the meeting centred on the critical state of the party finances and how the President and other elected members can assist in funding the operations of the party.


However, THISDAY gathered that the party did not succeed in persuading the President to play pivotal role in its fund-raising campaign as he declined to make any commitment, but rather advised the party’s leadership to go back and look inwards on how to mobilise funds internally through regular fees/donations from members.


Those who were at the meeting of the NWC with President Buhari included the National Chairman, Chief John Oyegun; National Secretary, Alhaji Mai-Mala Buni; Deputy National Chairman (North), Senator Lawan Shuaibu, and Deputy National Chairman, Chief Segun Oni.


A highly reliable source at the Presidency told THISDAY that Buhari politely declined any commitment to bear the financial burden of running the party.


“Buhari declined from making any financial commitment. He rather reminded the APC NWC members of how the leaders of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) messed themselves up by dipping their hands into public funds to run the party campaigns. He said he would not want APC to be seen as behaving in the same manner, moreso now that it is running a corrective government,” the source said. Since its victory at the 2015 presidential polls in which it secured majority support based on its change mantra, the APC have been very careful to avoid the some of the pitfalls of the PDP.


Even at the risk of operating a very tight budget, the ruling party’s leadership has tried to avoid going to ask its members in government to allocate funds for its activities. The party had relied on voluntary donations from benevolent members until the internal struggles for power and relevance at the National Assembly smeared its relationship with some of these leaders.


For instance, it was learnt that one of the strong financiers of APC and former governor of Lagos state, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu has decided to go underground following his displeasure at the actions of the Oyegun-led NWC. Also the APC governors who along with their colleagues in the Governors Forum had gone to seek for federal government’s bail-out fund to pay workers’ salaries found it inexplicable to divert such borrowed funds to party coffers.


It was learnt that at the heat of the financial crunch, one of the governors from the Southern part of the country came to the aid of the party by donating a sum of N50 million last October.


Following the consultative meeting at the presidency, Oyegun summoned an enlarged meeting of members of the NWC on Thursday at the party’s headquarters in Abuja where they were briefed on the outcome of discussions with President Buhari.


The NWC resolved that as part of a fund-raising strategy the party should implement provisions of its constitution which allowed for fees to be charged on members holding elective and appointive positions. Similarly, an initiative was proposed for all card-carrying members of the ruling party to henceforth pay levies in support of the day-to-day operations of the party. As part of the strategy, the party said it would henceforth become binding on all members to fulfill their financial obligations to the party as condition for eligibility to contest elective positions or to seek endorsement of the party for any appointive positions in government.


Efforts by THISDAY to speak with the National Secretary of APC or the Deputy spokesman, Timi Frank on the new plan of the party proved abortive as their telephone

http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/cash-crunch-hits-apc-as-buhari-advises-party-to-look-inward-for-funding/230555/#.Vps_4NMPTsI.facebook

Lalasticlala

bring back our yam

really?

Ok

Don't let them deceive you they tell so many lies

APC nor well, so their elected members receiving fat salaries & allowances for doing absolutely zilch can't pay dues?!!

This nation is a real ! Nonsense!

Na wah o, which way nigeria?

I can't be deceived with this smoke screen.
Let then organize a public donation to test their popularity after the elections. After all during elections, cattle rearers, yam farmers, market women etc were all donating money and "yams" to them. Let them go back to that old woman that donated her N 1mil life savings, she must have gathered a token since then...LOL. Have you lost the goodwill of the gullible public?
Liars...APC can liar for lucifer!!!

Rotimi Amaechi should return rivers state money to the people. Lobbing for VP with N50 mil but rather got snubbed and pushed to do the Jackie work as campaign coordinator, thought he will bag the SFG or COS but latter got a dismal minister of transport. The likes of Atikus and decampee PDP governors, Seraki, Dagora etc no send una...

If only governors could follow suit and stop using state resources to fund party activities. If APC is experiencing cash crunch, then PDP must be on life support.
---
I see the race for Akwa Ibom & Rivers State government houses hotting up. These parties are going to rely more on oil producing states to support party activities. Unfortunately for them, oil may be heading towards $20, meaning that even oil producing states may find it difficult to meet their recurrent expenditure & debt obligations.

Conservatively if a party like the APC has 10m members and each pays an annual fee of N1k,maybe in quarterly instalments of say N250,to make it easier for the financially challenged,that shud fetch N10b! N10b is more than enough to run the affairs of a party. Besides, elected members wud pay higher,say 10 or even 100k annually, aside fees for nomination forms.
The govt shud not give these people any dime.Some of these party excos, due to how ineffective our laws are and d impunity of the past, the only way they know to raise funds to fund their trivialities is to run to various govt executives to dip hands into govt funds and dash them, with no questions asked.Its unlawful and shud not be allowed to continue.

APC and propaganda ...............

modath:


APC nor well, so their elected members receiving fat salaries & allowances for doing absolutely zilch can't pay dues?!!

This nation is a real ! Nonsense!

To prevent previous antecedent, we should all be on the look out to ensure APC does not task state governors to remit to the party part of the little Fed. allocation that is not enough to pay workers.

APC cannot be trusted oooo.

What do you expect? Amaechi the Dasuki of Rivers state is no longer in power.

Na Wash

It's high time.

Now na morning

Hmmmmm...

don't understand dis my country again...nawa o

Amaechi will rescue the party just as he rescued Buhari from Atiku in December 2014!

scribble:





Dollarization Of The APC Primaries: How Amaehi Vanquished Atiku #saibuhari

The blogosphere was inundated with reports of the excessive sharing of dollars at the All Progressives Congress which took place during the latter part of last week.

One APC supporter and Special Adviser to Osun Governor on Environment, BolaIlori had blown the scandal open after he saw the beginning stages of the dollarization in action.

He took to his Facebook page and scribbled, “Crazy things are happening here!!! Some of these cannot represent the change Nigeria is yearning for. Excessive dollarization by one of the aspirants to is to say the least obscene. I have been involved in political process for decades now, I have never witnessed this volume of raw dollarization of party primaries. I only read about this kind of things in PDP primaries. A question been asked by conscientious delegates is that whoever can be giving out between $2000 to $5000 to…delegates certainly does not represent the kind of change Nigerians want…those who contributed to the pauperization of Nigeria now revel in dollarization… majority of Ondo delegates are still standing with Buhari but have been reduced from 85% to 70% within 24 hours…the remaining has gone with dollars ooo.!!!!!”

One has to wonder how Buhari was able to win the primaries in this era of stomach infrastructure where dollars are like the Biblical manna that God sent down from heaven to nourish the Israelites as they made their way to the promised land.

Sources close to the APC with knowledge of the way the Primaries unfolded have revealed that it was Rivers State Governor, Amaechi who flew back to Rivers State and returned to Lagos on Thursday morning with enough dollars to make Benjamin Franklin blush.

It has been revealed that Atiku offered the delegates $5000 each, but Amaechi doubled it to $10000 a pop. Thus turning the tables in favour of General Buhari.

Since his adventure into the APC, Amaechi has gone out of his way to prove himself a party loyalist, always the first to shoki or azonto at the many events the APC holds, which he himself is usually the chief sponsor.

According to party insiders, Amaechi has overtaken Tinubu as the major financier of the party. One does not need to wonder why he is always at President Jonathan’s throat over misappropriated oil wells or other such business. Anything that diminishes from the State’s coffers will have a ripple effect on his funding budget for the APC.



Joe Francis wrote in from Port Harcourt.


http://www.theheraldng.com/dollarization-apc-primaries-amaehi-vanquished-atiku-saibuhari/

An uncoroborated statement by a buhari associate, and it is given this headline.

Nigerian journalism is in the gutters

so they wanted buhari to release state money to run the party

What do they want us to do now?

Propaganda

Amaechiiiiii Thief!!!!!

Lol @ Tinubu going underground, abi is he forming another party again? Since this one did not yield anything tangible for him?

refiner:
don't understand dis my country again...nawa o

...as i dnt understand you likewise..

-How did pdp get money to fund the election Arms money
-How did APC get money to fund the election ( dont we deserve to know)

Hmm strange

only trying to deceive the gullible in believing this crap