$500,000 Bribery Allegation Rocks APC Zoning Panel

$500,000 Bribery Allegation Rocks APC Zoning Panel

President-elect General Muhammadu Buhari may have been confronted with his first acid test on the fight against corruption. Members of a panel set up by his party, All Progressives Congress (APC), to propose the zoning of political offices allegedly received $500,000 as bribe from a ranking senator from the Northcentral to doctor their report.

The party’s National Working Committee (NWC) had last Thursday inaugurated a five-man committee to come up with an acceptable formula for zoning political offices in the National Assembly.

The committee, Pointblanknews.com gathered, on the same day submitted its report to the National Chairman, Chief John Oyegun. However, it was gathered that the contents of the report changed between the venue of the earlier meeting and Oyegun’s house.

Pointblanknews.com gathered that the five-man panel had agreed that the position of Senate President be reserved for the Northeast, with the Southwest to produce the Speaker, House of Representatives.

However, the arrival a $500,000 largesse from a ranking senator from the Northcentral reportedly changed aspects of the report to suggest that the committee had recommended that the North central produce the Senate President and the Northeast the House Speaker.

Fumed an influential APC chieftain, “This is not 1993. The present realities do not support ceding the positions of Senate President and the Speaker of the House of Representatives to the North alone.

“What we did was to cede the Senate President to the North east and the Speaker of the House of Representatives to the Southwest”, adding, “whoever collected money to doctor the report is on his own.”

Apparently embarrassed by the bribery allegation, which is reportedly being investigated, the APC leadership on Monday disowned the zoning formula published by some newspapers.

The party’s spokesman Alhaji Lai Mohammed urged Nigerians to disregard media reports on the alleged zoning of leadership offices in the National Assembly.

He said: “No appointments have been made and no offices have been zoned. The main concern of our party at the moment is to ensure a smooth transition and to hit the ground running, in the overall interest of the long-suffering people of Nigeria.

“At the appropriate time, Nigerians will be informed of the appointments made and the offices zoned.”

Meanwhile, the party’s National Executive Committee is expected to meet on Thursday to consider the tainted report of the National Working Committee (NWC) on the zoning of positions.

Some members of the party’s NEC told Pointblanknews.com that they knew the persons desperate to get party positions, but said such persons would smoke themselves out.

“We cannot wrest power from PDP only to hand it over to felons and criminals. Our mantra is change. Anybody who thinks it will be business as usual is living in a fools paradise. You either adapt to change or perish,” an officer declared.

-Point Blank