Name Those Who Gave You N13m, APC Challenges Wadume – TheNigerialawyer

* Says ruling party has no budget for thugs

The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has denied the claim
by the alleged notorious kidnapper, Hamisu Balla, a.k.a Wadume,
that the party made a sum of N13 million available to him during
the last presidential elections.

Wadume has been in the middle of the raging storm between the
Nigerian Army and the Nigeria Police over the murder of three
police operatives and two civilians by soldiers in Ibi town, Taraba
State.

An Army Captain in charge of the 93 Battalion, Wukari was also
alleged to have aided his escape after his initial arrest by the
police.

Wadume in his statement made to the Police after he was
re-arrested in Kano had confessed collecting N6m from a sitting
governor on the platform of the People’s Democratic Party, N13m
from APC in the last presidential election and defrauded a civil
servant of N30m.

But the APC national secretariat on Saturday night denied
knowledge of the claim.

The party national publicity secretary, Mallam Lanre Isa-Onilu
in a statement challenged the suspect to name anyone who gave him
money.

Onilu declared that his party “would never allocate money for
kidnappers and murderers.”

The statement read in part: “It is expected that the alleged
kidnapper, having come face to face with justice, would throw
whatever he could lay his hands on into the fray. In any case, our
party did not have a budget for thugs.

“Unlike the period when the ruling party dipped hands into the
public treasury to fund political campaigns and elections, APC had
to rely on its own resources. Even if we had all the money, we
would never allocate money for kidnappers and murderers. That era
ended with PDP.

“Perhaps, he can name whoever gave him money. Definitely, it was
not APC. From his purported confession, he claimed to be a PDP
member before he went on to contest under another party.”