Probe Fundings For APC, PDP’s Presidential Campaigns, Metuh Challenges Buhari

The opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) yesterday challenged the President Muhammadu Buhari led government to set up a National Truth Commission where politicians and other Nigerians would publicly discuss the true meaning of corrupt practices in the country.

The opposition party while reiterating its support for the anti-corruption crusade, however called for investigation into the source of funding of the PDP and All Progressives Congress (APC) 2015 Presidential campaigns as well as presidential security votes since 1984.

It also called for investigation into the contributions from APC controlled state governors for their presidential campaign as well as allegations that some serving ministers were appointed to cover up the slush fund that they provided to finance the APC presidential campaign.

It however noted that until top officials of the former government open up on the exact source of the funding, it remains premature to be accusing their party members of corrupt practices.

The arrest of former National Security Adviser, Col Sambo Dasuki, over use of funds supposedly meant for procurement of weapons to fight insurgency, have led to arrests of prominent persons who benefitted from the largesse.

Credit: Leadership

Buhari’s Aide Narrates How NTA, AIT Humiliated Them During 2015 Presidential Election

President Muhammadu Buhari has restated his gratitude to Nigerians for his victory at the general elections saying he emerged winner against all odds.

Speaking at The Red Media Summit in Lagos, Thursday,? Mr. Buhari that he won the election despite the deployment of state forces against him.

“Muhammadu Buhari’s goodwill greetings to you is on account of the fact that he won an election that many people think he was not going to win,” said Garba Shehu, Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, ??who represented Mr. Buhari.

“Americans say that elections are won on the dollar. It’s very improbable that anybody can win an election without money. We didn’t have advertising money on our campaign. Even when we had little money to spend on advertising, the Nigerian Television Authority was not making available to us slots, neither was AIT.

“I remember on a particular night I called NTA, they had 16 slots of one minute adverts and I said I wanted to buy one minute for the Buhari campaign, they said all 16 had been sold.

“Some other instances that exposed the partisan nature of the NTA. Money was returned to us, from AIT money was returned to us. They simply won’t advertise for us.”

Mr. Shehu expressed the presidency’s gratitude to Statecraft, an arm on The Red Media, for ?”selling an unlikely candidate to a very skeptical nation.”

“The day there was a security siege at my home, I woke up to see that my house had been surrounded by armed policemen in the course of the campaign,” Mr. Shehu said.

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Smears & Fears: Nigeria’s Presidential Campaigns Gets Personal

When Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary-general, was in Abuja last week, he urged all presidential candidates and parties to rise above the personal and debate the issues that matter.

But the message appears to have gone unheeded, with fresh attacks from the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) against Muhammadu Buhari, from the main opposition All Progressives Congress (APC).

Buhari, who hails from the Muslim-majority north, has previously been accused of being an Islamic extremist, of failing to finish high school and alleged monumental fraud.

On Sunday, President Goodluck Jonathan’s campaign chief Femi Fani-Kayode added another claim, publicly mentioning “rumours” that the 72-year-old was “mortally ill” from prostate cancer.

“We are therefore constrained to urge him to prove to the Nigerian people that he really is as ‘fit as a fiddle’… by taking a brisk walk or even jogging around the perimeter of the stadium before any of his rallies,” he said in a statement. “If he can do that, it will go a long way to allay the fears of many.”

Raising fears about the health of a man who could become president recalls the presidency of Umaru Yar’Adua, who died in office in 2010 from a kidney related ailment.

He was believed to have had health issues even before he assumed office in 2007 but were never disclosed.

Buhari, a former military ruler, said the claim smacked of desperation on the part of the ruling party, with the February 14 vote widely predicted to go down to the wire. “How they got the impression that I was sick I don’t know,” he told a news conference on Sunday, revealing that the only health issue he had was a cold.

Instead, he said the medical document said to back up the PDP claims was forged and was designed to avoid the main issues in the election, including widespread corruption at the highest level.

Buhari has come under personal attack in part because of his time in the military, which saw him seize power from a democratically elected government in a coup in December 1983.

For the PDP, a leopard can’t change his spots and the party has been whipping up the politics of fear, harking back to the days of the former army general’s crackdown on corruption and indiscipline.

“No matter how many pretty robes you wear, once a tyrant, always a tyrant,” one PDP newspaper advertisement ran on Monday, over photos of Buhari in uniform, a dinner jacket and ethnic attire.

Others evoked the jailing of political opponents or his muzzling of the media during his 20 months in power.

Whether the tactic pays off for the PDP will only be seen when the results come in, with no independent polling currently available to assess voting intentions.

But for politics watchers, the standard of the campaign is a worrying development, arguing that it does little to help enhance already shaky confidence in the country’s leaders.

“I think it has a negative impact on the political process and citizens aren’t able to see the quality of people running for election,” said Clement Nwankwo, director of the Policy and Legal Advisory Centre, a pro-democracy group.

“What they see is personal attacks, falsehoods, concocted stories and political smearing… that has not elevated the debate,” he told AFP.

For Nwankwo, the APC has fallen into a PDP trap by responding to the claims instead of rebutting the allegations by continually questioning the government’s achievements.

Dapo Thomas, a politics lecturer at the Lagos State University, called it a “gutter campaign” borne out fear in the PDP that it could lose power for the first time in 16 years.

The electorate may be able to see through it, he suggested, particularly as some of the issues had not been raised on the three previous occasions that Buhari stood for the presidency. “They (the PDP) have seen the writing on the wall,” he added.

Credit: Yahoo