• 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?

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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.