Peter Obi responds to corruption allegation rocking Labour Party

Peter Obi, the Labour Party’s presidential candidate, has demanded that the national treasurer, Oluchi Opara, look into allegations of financial misconduct made against Julius Abure, the chairman.

On Thursday, February 15, Obi gave an update to the media during a briefing about the funding of the 2023 Obi-Datti Presidential campaign organization.

Obi stated that an audit of the party’s finances for its activities leading up to the general elections in 2023 has been initiated by the party.

It doesn’t seem like I waited too long. When was the election held? In February of the previous year. After that, the lawsuit began, and it was resolved in November. As a result, I was unable to continue discussing the Labour Party account in court. We began even from all the actions of being in campaign from 2022 and then to the end of 2023 in December once that was concluded, according to Obi.

The speaker went on, “We are only in the first quarter of 2024. This has never occurred with any other party in Nigeria, as far as I can tell. Tell me one. In Nigeria, it is customary to hold people accountable for their intentions and to overlook those who have committed wrongdoing over an extended period of time.

“As in the first quarter of 2024, we are now accounting immediately. We have only recently commenced the procedure. I was unable to call auditors the previous year. We won’t be phoning them all at once.

During the press conference, Aisha Yesufu, the campaign organization’s chair of the fundraising team, also stated that the 2023 presidential election cost about N744,500,000 in legal fees.

“Neither the party management nor the accounting are my responsibilities. You are aware that a party is governed by its elected executive, the National Working Committee, to which I do not belong.

I have not signed any agreements, not even the accounts campaign. I do not have access to any group account. It’s all being handled. I transferred the money that I was given to one or more accounts that are appropriately handled. We will account for everything, I guarantee you of that. Because of this, we are urging everyone in the public, both domestically and abroad, to find out where these billions and millions of dollars were spent, or even to give cash to someone.

Because we have folks who have paid for flights, transportation, and logistics, people have supported us more in kind than with cash.

For the Labour Party’s part, I have explained our plan of action; we won’t settle disputes by arguing “he said, she said.” We now have a self-sufficient individual to advise us on our course of action.

The campaign organization’s chair of fundraising, Aisha Yesufu, also spoke at the event and stated that following the 2023 presidential election, the organization had to spend approximately N744,500,000.00 on legal proceedings.

Yesufu revealed that N595,976,994 in donations were given to the campaign group.

“We asked individuals to donate so that we could get back to them and explain how their money was wisely spent since we believe that accountability and transparency are very important and crucial. We appreciate all of the warm words and monetary donations. We were able to obtain N595,976,994 from citizen donations. The funds we were able to raise from the four accounts we previously discussed are shown here. Additionally, we received N8,000,000 directly from Peter Obi, the candidate,” declared Yesufu.

“We created a strategic plan aimed at directing the momentum of the movement and providing Datti Ahmed and Peter Obi with support from various groups.” Throughout all 36 states in Nigeria, we gave over a hundred support groups both direct and indirect assistance.

“We also implemented media-related campaigns that utilized social media, community outreach, and over 40 radio stations to reach over 11 million people.

“We were careful to be frugal in our usage of the monies that we received, even though we would have loved to utilize televisions and everything else.

Thus, from these items, campaign materials totaling N258,374,330.00 were purchased and delivered to all 36 States as well as Abuja. Radio and media broadcasting came at a N16,432,867.00 cost.

We have N10,808,948.00 set aside for election promotion costs. Our expenses for Polling Unit Agents came to N324,381,700.00. Naturally, we then incurred N1,750,544.00 in bank charges.

Additionally, we incurred N477,000.00 in administrative costs. To pay for legal fees, we have N744,500,000.00 available. And after that, we spent more than N28,500,000.00 on election and campaign activities. Remember what I mentioned before when it comes to legal fees: the candidate himself brought N800,000,000.00, Yesufu continued.