Backs probe of N4.8bn alleged expenditure
The Media Sub-Committee of the Convention Planning Committee of the All Progressives Congress, (APC), has expressed support for the on-going probe of the convention finances by the leadership of the ruling party.
The Secretary of the Sub-Committee, Garba Shehu, in a statement issued yesterday, said the report in a national newspaper that the Media Sub-Committee, led by Abdullahi Sule, Nasarawa State governor, co-chaired by the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, spent a whopping amount of N800 million was strange news, totally untrue.
According to the statement, titled: APC Media Subcommittee Didnt Know, See, or Hear about N800 million Expenses, the expenses sheet accounting for N100 million and the detailed report of the work by the sub-committee have since been sent to the party, and shared with the committee leaders and its membership.
If that huge amount of money was spent on media work at the convention, we make bold to say that we were, and still are, unaware of the what, who, when and how it was expended.
“In view of the astonishing revelation of the money allegedly spent by our committee in this report, we strongly suspect that our account, rendered to the party and detailing out each of our expenses may have been the trigger for the ongoing investigation and the reported suspensions”, it stated.
The statement further said, The sub-committee, which I served as Secretary, got the total sum of N100 million only. We thank the Governor for giving us a venue, tea and coffee. We submitted a budget of about N360 million.
“When the Finance Sub-committee told us that even the N100 paid us was in excess of our budgetary allocation, we scrambled backward, canceling commitments duly entered into for billboards, production of documentaries, lamp-pole, ads, and so many other things. Some of them we could cancel; others were irreversible.
“On the assurances given by our leaders, we negotiated a token of commitment to TV networks for live coverage, with everyone agreeing that it was a must-do for the convention. However, at the very end, we could only pay half of that amount to each of the stations, hoping that the leadership of the party will take responsibility for the payment of the balances due as a matter of honor.
In the course of doing this work, all payments to third parties were done by a committee member in the presence of at least two other members. This was in a bid to rise above scandal.
Recall that penultimate Friday, the National Chairman of the APC, Senator Abdullahi Adamu, ordered all departmental directors at the party headquarters to proceed on an indefinite suspension. Some of the departments affected include Administration, Organisation, Welfare, Strategy, Legal and Publicity.
