National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, says the party is sad that a member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is the Deputy Senate President.
Reacting to a comment by Senator Dino Melaye that the APC should be grateful that it didn’t lose the National Assembly leadership to the PDP instead of persecuting Saraki, Oyegun told Punch that “the thing that rankled us most was the election of Ekweremadu as Deputy Senate President.”
“Saraki is a member of the APC, much as the main line of the party would have wished a different result and a different scenario but we all find it very, very difficult to accept the emergence of a PDP person as his deputy”, he declared.
On investigation of PDP over its campaign funds, while there are no prosecution of APC members over its own campaign funds, Oyegun replied: “We are not investigating PDP campaign funds. We are investigating records as to how public funds were hijacked for illegal purposes which were not budgeted for by the National Assembly.
“Nobody in business who contributed a lot of money has been dragged to any tribunal because he gave PDP funds. Public funds, public resources, money that belongs to you, me and the people of this country were stolen and diverted.
“Crude oil was being illegally sold to fund the campaigns and other political activities. Not just the campaigns, people just shared money and pocketed.
“Anybody who steals from the treasury either to fund campaign, or to put in his pocket or to buy an estate in every part of the world would be asked questions. It must not be allowed.
“Nobody must be allowed to get away with that. It is not the same with campaign funding. We are not investigating PDP campaign funds.”
Insisting that the APC did not make too many promises, Oyegun stated that “The President promised security; he promised the people jobs.
“He promised the people revitalisation of the economy and strongly promised the people the taming of corruption.
“A lot of things are under this and up till today, we still stand by this and we stand behind because these are the things he promised and he is determined to do them for the people.
“The results are already showing all over the place. The President did not make too many promises. A lot of other things people are saying are neither here nor there; people are saying things he never said.
“Things like: he will make the Naira equivalent to the Dollar; he never said things like that but people just manufacture and read what they want to read into these issues.”
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