Former
presidential candidate of the defunct All Peoples Party (APP) Chief Olu Falae,
who was allegedly accused of receiving N100m from the $2.1 billion arms money
from the former National Security Adviser (NSA), Colonel Sambo Dasuki, in an
interview said:
"I
want to say with all emphasis that I never took even one naira from Dasuki.
Beyond that, I want to assert that I never had any relationship with Dasuki. I
knew Dasuki way back in 1986-87,when he was ADC to General Babagida and I was
Secretary to the Federal Government. Since he left that government around 1987,
I had no contact or dealing with him; absolutely none".
"The
N100 million they are bandying about in the media, the one that I know about,
it happened as follows: Chief Tony Anenih, a former Chairman of the Board of
Trustees of the PDP, phoned me late January last year and said he would like to
see me; he would like to come from Abuja to see me in Akure. And he came. He
came with someone, and I, too, invited somebody to be with me. The four of us were
together in the meeting; and Chief Anenih
said they were observing that my party, SDP, had no presidential
candidate and, therefore, they would want us to ask our supporters to vote for
his own party’s candidate, President Goodluck Jonathan".
"I
told him that, in principle, there was nothing wrong with the two parties
collaborating, but that the collaboration must be a principled collaboration:
it must be based on principles. I told him that there were certain things we
desired the government to do but they had not done for the people, and that if
we were going to support their candidate, they must commit themselves to make
changes in those areas. He asked for the areas? I said number one, their party
must be prepared to restructure Nigeria from the colossal unity system, and the
best way of doing that was to fully implement the report of the National
Conference 2014".
"Number
two, that the party must commit itself to a policy of zero tolerance for
corruption because I saw that corruption was monumental in what they were
doing. Number three, I said the party in government must destroy Boko Haram and
give stability to Nigeria. Number four, there was mass unemployment and youths
were getting frustrated, that they must articulate programmes to create jobs for
the unemployed. Number five, that I observed that the party in government was
spending virtually our entire revenue on recurrent expenditure, that they must
reduce recurrent expenditure so as to generate surpluses to finance capital
development like roads, schools, hospitals, etc".
"Item
number six, that if we accepted this tide and accepted them, then if the party
won the election, we will expect reasonable participation in that government.
And he said they were totally happy with all these strict conditions, that the
conditions were acceptable to them; in fact, he said they were already
implementing some of them. So, on that note, he returned to Abuja. But after he
left, I decided to write to him in order to document this relationship. The
letter I wrote to him, again I listed the six conditions which I had mentioned
in our oral discussion. And three days later, he wrote back to me saying that
he had consulted all the stakeholders of his party including the President and
they were all happy to accept those conditions to work with the SDP in the
election’s that were forthcoming".
"So,
having accepted our conditions, I proceeded to Abuja to summon the meeting of
my party executive and decision making organs and made the presentation to
them. There was a very robust debate and, at the end of the debate, the
executive committee of my party endorsed their request that we should work with
Jonathan in the elections".
Source: Vanguard
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