I didn’t collect money from NNPC for Buhari’s campaign ― Keyamo

The Director of Strategic Communications of the President Muhammadu Buhari Campaign Organization, Festus Keyamo, has denied receiving large sums of money from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) for President Muhammadu Buhari’s campaign.

In a statement made available to the media on Thursday, he said reports which suggested that he had also submitted another larger budget to the corporation to run the publicity aspect of the campaign were false.

The campaign spokesman blamed the allegation on the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which he said was trying to attribute its old habit to the Buhari administration.

The statement read: “Our attention has been drawn to a fake news making the rounds to the effect that the Director of Strategic Communications and Spokesperson of President Muhammadu Buhari Campaign Organisation, Mr Festus Keyamo, SAN, has received a certain large sum of money from the NNPC and submitted yet another larger budget to the same Corporation to run the media and publicity department of the campaign.

“The story is the classic example of the many rots in the system that President Muhammadu Buhari is determined to address. It used to be the case during the era of PDP at the centre that election periods are always seen as a time for bazaar and jamboree when the public treasury is opened for soothsayers, witchdoctors, fraudsters, prostitutes, party loyalists, and all kinds of funny characters to feast upon.

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“Hence, between January and the time of the elections in 2015, the PDP opened the treasury and withdrew One Hundred Billion Naira (N100,000,000,000.00) that was shared to all kinds of characters.

It is this same tendency they exhibited and still have that they now attempt to attribute to us.

“If anything at all, the experience of the loss of the PDP in 2015 has taught everyone a bitter lesson: the sharing of money does not win elections and we do not intend to go that route.

“We shall continue to showcase the achievements of President Muhammadu Buhari to convince Nigerians that he deserves a second term in office. As we speak, the commissioning of the completed Port Harcourt International airport is ongoing.

“For the avoidance of doubt, my participation in this campaign is part of my larger crusade to enthrone an accountable government and true democracy in our polity.

“To me, this is not just a campaign but a crusade, hence, I came out of my shell to make a full-blown participation in the process. I am determined to make my little contribution to prevent those who have looted our treasury in the past to establish “big businesses” that they now flaunt in our faces and who have been indicted both locally and internationally from staging a comeback to power.

“In the process, my hard-earned integrity would be guarded jealously. I have not and will not go near the public purse and the President’s Campaign Organisation will not do so either.

“This is a pledge before the Nigerian people by which we shall stand.”