How we spent N12b – PDP

The leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on Thursday gave account of how the controversial N12 billion generated by the party during the last general election was spent.

The money was the proceeds from sale of nomination and expression of interest forms from various elective office seekers across the federation.

At a briefing in Abuja, the party’s Acting National Chairman, Prince Uche Secondus, said the actual amount was not N12 billion but a little over N11 billon.

He said,”10 percent of the money went to the state chapters, five percent went to the zonal chapters and another five percent went to local government chapters of the party.

“Another 15 percent was expended on assignments by various party functionaries and the rest was used to fund our campaigns. We raised money and we used the money for elections. We don’t need to go into details.”

Protesting workers at the party secretariat have been at war with the Secondus-led National Working Committee (NWC) over alleged embezzlement of the money, which the workers said was partly responsible for the poor outing of the PDP in the last general election.

The NWC had reacted by threatening to sack half of the workers and to also reduce their pay by 50 percent, a development that further infuriated the aggrieved workers.

Senate Minority Leader, Godswill Akpabio, who led the PDP Senate caucus to the briefing, explained why the party must reduce the number of the secretariat staff.

Akpabio said, “We can no longer run to the Villa for cash so we don’t have the wherewithal to maintain that large number of secretariat staff.

“The workers should understand that they are in a master-servant relationship in which you cannot force an unwilling master to keep a recalcitrant servant. We are definitely going to downsize.”

Akpabio and Secondus complained about what they described as “harassment and intimidation” of the party’s ex governors and former ministers that served under the Goodluck Jonathan administration.

According to them, the Department of State Security (DSS) and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) have singled out ex PDP public office holders for investigation.