CASH CRUNCH HITS BUHARI’S CAMPAIGN admin | December 30, 2014 | News, Politics | No Comments • APC governors reduce financial support • We depend on people’s donations, says organisation The campaign organisation of the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, Major General Muhammadu Buhari, has been hit by a cash crisis following the dwindling fortunes of states under the party’s control. It was learnt at the weekend that the APC states, like other states of the federation, are badly affected by the volatility in the global oil market that has reduced the distributable funds from the Federation Account among the three tiers of government. This, one of the party’s governors confided in New Telegraph, has made them to reorder their priorities. According to the governor, he and his colleagues have been forced to cut down on their financial support to Buhari because besides their contractual obligations to civil servants and funding of capital projects going on in their respective states, some of them are battling re-election while others have funding of the campaigns of their anointed successors to contend with. Unlike Buhari who as at last week has garnered N54 million in donations from a cross-section of Nigerians, his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) counterpart, President Goodluck Jonathan, has a heavy war chest. Jonathan at a fund raiser last weekend, had grossed over N21 billion for his re-election bid with the donors including 21 PDP governors who donated N50 million each to the president’s campaign fund. The source, however, added that given the challenges before them, the APC governors have chosen to focus on their respective states rather than Buhari’s presidential campaign. He said: “The current revenue fortunes of the states call for cautious spending on the part of any governor. Gone are the days when it was easy for any governor to commit himself to several other things; but when you look at what is on ground, especially when several states could not even pay salaries, how do you expect such states to think about funding a presidential campaign? “It is absolutely impossible because each of us is either focusing on reelection, or in the case of those leaving, the issue of funding the would-be successor is very important too; so which one do you pick?” However, the Buhari Campaign Organisation, has dismissed fears that the precarious financial state of the party’s governors will hurt the candidate’s vote-seeking, adding that it is in a bid to avoid such a scenario that made Buhari right from the outset to solicit donations from ordinary Nigerians. The Director of Publicity, APC Presidential Campaign, Mr. Dele Alake, said the call for public funding of the party’s presidential campaign was to ensure that Nigerians owned the incoming government even before it is elected. “I think the Nigerian media needs to put more perspective and perhaps, try as much as possible to be analytical in this regard. Let us take the United States for example; did the Democrats or the Democratic governors have any issue about funding before the current president, Barack Obama, resorted to the idea of public donors to fund his campaign? No! “The idea is to engender more public and mass participation in government and governance even before the man is elected so that they can be part of it when it finally berths; this without doubt, is the best way to enshrine an all-inclusive government that will work for the common good of the people rather than for the good of a select few who sit in the comfort of their chosen points to manipulate the nation to the disadvantage of the common man. “I urge you to ignore such suggestions because such are sheer evidence of negativism aimed at discouraging the ordinary Nigerian whose one naira is a tool for change in Nigeria,” Alake added. However, it was learnt that while money might not be Jonathan’s headache, his campaign is facing a threat due to the emergence of new battleground states. A source in the president’s campaign organisation expressed worry that even though the incumbent would win the 2015 election, “there are likely to be lost grounds arising from the emergence of new battleground states.” He listed the battleground states as Kebbi, Kaduna and
Posted on: Tue, 30 Dec 2014 14:50:21 +0000
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