Former Deputy National Chairman of PDP, Bode George, who has been
implicated in the current $2.1 billion arms deal scandal, has denied
claims of collecting N100 million from former Minister of state for
Finance Bashir Yuguda. According to him, what he collected from Yuguda
was $30,000 meant for logistics of some PDP elders who were charged to
reconcile warring factions in the party. He said this in a statement he
released yesterday. Read the statement after the cut...
“My
attention has been drawn to another mischievous and deliberately
fraudulent claim that I collected N100 million from Bashir Yuguda, the
former Minister of State for Finance. This is another blatant falsehood,
stripped of any iota of truth. This is yet again a depraved
continuation of lynch mob journalism orchestrated by an online
newspaper. The salient fact is that very early this year, long before
the election period, the party set up Contact and Mobilization Committee
for each zone to reconcile various factions and ensure a firm unity of
purpose within the zones before the election. I was elected as the
Chairman for the South-West zone. The committee which was made up of 18
senior members of the party with distinguished history of honour and
exemplary leadership, met at least 10 times in my office in Lagos. These
people travelled all the way from every corner of the South-West, with
three members representing each state. All of them are very much alive
to testify to my assertions. Sometime in the middle of these
deliberations, Yuguda came to me and said the party was reimbursing the
18 elders of the committee for their transportation, accommodation and
feeding allowance for the work that was done. The committee later
submitted the report of its deliberations to the party and then wound
up. For all these efforts Yuguda gave the committee only $30,000. That
was less than N6 million at that time. Yuguda can never claim that he
gave the Committee N100 million. That is the figment of the imagination
of rascally scribblers purporting to be journalists. Again, facts are
sacred.”
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