By Daniel Kanu
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on Tuesday alerted the nation of alleged moves by President Muhammadu Buhari and the All Progressives Congress (APC) to castrate the opposition party financially, ahead 2019 polls.
The leading opposition party alleged that was about procuring “frivolous court orders from compromised judicial officers to garnishee accounts belonging to PDP and critical stakeholders, perceived to be against the president’s re-election bid.”
On Tuesday, the APC claimed that the PDP and its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, were facing serious difficulties raising funds for the elections.
APC’s Deputy National Publicity Secretary, Yekini Nabena, in a statement made available to journalists in Abuja alleged that due to the stringent measures put in place by the Buhari administration, the PDP was in a dilemma on how to source funds to run the Atiku Presidential Campaign.
Nabena claimed, without evidence, that information available to him showed that PDP’s hope of sourcing campaign funds from public coffers had been dashed.
“The presidential candidate (Atiku) expects the party to provide funds for his campaign. This is the Buhari era, an era of strict accountability and transparency in the use and application of public funds and not the Jonathan era in 2015 when the national treasury was open to PDP leaders to prosecute the presidential campaign,” Nabena said.
“The party leaders are therefore in serious difficulties and dilemma on how to source funds to run the Atiku Presidential Campaign.
“Some financiers of the party expect that the candidate, having bought the ticket with millions of dollars, should have the financial capacity to run his campaign.
“With the candidate’s expectation that it is the party that will fund his campaign, it is now clear that they are at a crossroads and the chickens have come home to roost.”
Nabena advised the nation’s anti-corruption agencies to ensure that all sources of campaign fund by the political parties were closely monitored.
But the PDP fired back, claiming that it was “already aware of how instructions have been given to certain agencies of government to trail and throw up fabrications in order to create an impression of financial infractions around the said accounts,” Mr. Kola Ologbondiyan, the party’s National Publicity Secretary said in a statement on Tuesday.
“Already, accounts belonging to critical stakeholders are being frisked with a view to have them liquidated ahead of the general elections.
“It is clear that the only reason for this is to ensure that our party and candidates are deprived of access to funds for campaigns, but the APC and the Buhari Presidency fail to realize that the 2019 election is now a battle between them and Nigerians, who are the bastion of the PDP.
“Nigerians have since taken over the saddle for the quest to rid the nation of this incompetent, vicious and vengeful administration, for which they are now freely making contributions and sacrifices. They have collectively resolved to vote out President Buhari and not even the APC’s on-going vote-buying strategy and intimidation can scuttle that resolve.”