- Dasuki paid me monthly –Okupe
From Dennis Mernyi, Abuja
Ministers who served during the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan have decried the continued arrest, prosecution and detention of members of the former cabinet as well as other Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) stalwarts for partaking in the disbursement of the 2015 election funds.
In a statement in Abuja yesterday Dr Abubakar Sulaiman, Jonathan’s minister of Economic Planning said reports in the media tended to criminalise ex-ministers and other PDP stakeholders who participated legitimately in the Goodluck presidential campaign.
“The ongoing attempt at assembling all who participated in funds mobilisation for party agents and party officials for Jonathan’s election across the 36 states amounts to raw political witchhunt and persecution.
“I believe strongly that lovers of democracy in Nigeria would not watch and allow the disparaging of people’s names to go unquestioned.
“The EFCC should, once again, review her method of militancy and unprocedural measures. If this current attempt amounts to auditing the election funds of the Jonathan presidency, it is equally fair and apt enough to probe into President Muhammadu Buhari’s presidential funds, too. Let’s be just,fair and Godly in the discharge of our official engagements.”
According to him, the development is not only unfortunate but a calculated attempt by the anti graft agencies, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Department of State Security (DSS), “to smear most of us of our good names.
“It must be stated unequivocally that participation in a presidential campaign is a lawful political process worldwide and it requires huge some of capital to accomplish.
“So, if few days to presidential election, coordinators and party leaders took deliveries of funds from Presidential Campaign Organisation from the headquarters in the 36 states of the federation and FCT direct from a bank,almost at the same time,following banking procedure of receipt and in a more transparent manners, what shoddy deal has taken place?
In a related development, Dr. Doyin Okupe Jonathan’s former senior special assistant on Public Affairs, revealed, yesterday that his office was funded monthly by embattled former National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki (retd).
Okupe, who served under Jonathan from 2012 to 2015, insisted he did not share of the now controversial arms deals funds.
“I was not paid arms deal money. The NSA paid for the running of my office monthly from August 2012. Dasukigate was in 2014. I did not take part in the campaign,” he said on his Twitter handle yesterday.
The arms scam reportedly cost the country over $15 billion in stolen funds.
Regardless, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) alleged he got at least N1.6 billion off Dasuki in three cyber security contracts.
One of the contracts had instructions to hunt down unfriendly media websites with Distributed Denial of Service attacks.
It was believed to be a project conceived to shut down online media platforms perceived as friendly towards Muhammadu Buhari, the then presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) ahead of the 2015 election.
The other contract was to intercept all optic fibre cables landing in Nigeria. The third was a passive mass and target GSM interception that had the ability to decrypt ciphers and operate undetected.