By Omeiza Ajayi, Abuja
THE ruling All Progressives Congress APC has expressed deep outrage over a document purportedly containing its 2023 general election rigging plans in which it allegedly earmarked N6.5 trillion for the said purpose.
Apart from using the said funds to sway the Nigerian electorate to support and vote for the party and its Presidential Candidate in 2023, the document alleged that obscene amounts of money have been voted for outright vote-buying, compromising election officials, security operatives, judicial officers and others.
The document
The 13-page document, which was exclusively obtained by Vanguard, grouped the states according to the six geopolitical zones.
It also listed four prominent members of the party from each zone as those to receive funds meant for the zones.
The document also listed seven farmers’ organizations and multipurpose societies as vehicles to be used in receiving the funds which was broken down into N928, 668, 421, 154.28 (Nine Hundred and Twenty Eight Billion, Six Hundred and Sixty Eight Million, Four Hundred an Twenty One Thousand, One Hundred and Fifty Four Naira, Twenty Eight Kobo) for each of the organizations.
The Funds Coordinating/Disbursement Committee and the Funds Supervising Committee each has six members, including a state governor, a minister, and two presidential advisers among others.
Its survey of 22 states controlled by the APC shows 110,306 polling units with over 29.804 million voters while the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, with 14 states has 63, 481 polling units with over 17.14 million voters.
By its projection, other parties in the contest would in total score slightly above a million votes with 804, 330 estimated rejected votes.
The projection is that APC will have a “winning difference” of over 11.66 million voters.
Under the subheading, “Voters Inducement,” the document proposes amounts between N10, 000 and N20, 000 per voter.
With a targeted voter population of 47, 748, 420, the document estimated the sum of over N1.909 trillion to be spent on the voters at N20,000 per voter.
The document also voted over N153 billion to be spent on ad-hoc election officials, observers as well as security and defence forces.
Equally, over N3.153 trillion would be spent via programmes like Conditional Funds Transfer, Food Distribution, Free Fertilizer Distribution, Artisans and MSMEs Support Funds, Transportation Support Funds and IDP Support Funds.
In the document, election tribunal expenses is to gulp nearly N153.5 billion while APC Governors would be given over N730 billion.
APC states and local government area offices are to be given a combined sum of N300 billion while APC Support Groups would get N100 billion.
In total, the document proposes for the ruling party to spend N6, 500, 679, 948, 080, that is, Six Trillion, Five Hundred Billion, Six Hundred and Seventy Nine Million, Nine Hundred and Forty Eight Thousand and Eighty Naira.
PDP-sponsored
However, the ruling party has accused the opposition PDP of manufacturing the said document in an attempt to smear its image.
APC said it is a party founded on the rule of law and that it would never seek to engage in electoral malfeasance to gain an unfair electoral advantage over others.
“The APC wishes to place firmly on record that the document is not of the Party. We neither authored nor own any such document, and it certainly did not emanate from our Party”, Felix Morka, spokesman of the APC, said, adding: “The document is the handiwork of very sick elements of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party in a desperate quest for unmerited electoral advantage by attempting to smear our party with wrong doing.”
Vanguard News Nigeria