The national leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party has
declared that it no longer has money to complete its multi-billion naira new national
secretariat. The new secretariat is located at the Central Business
District, Abuja. A correspondent, who has been visiting the secretariat for
some time, observed that contractors handling the project were only doing skeletal
jobs at the site.
When a correspondent visited the site on Wednesday, there
was no visible job being done there. It was gathered that the project was
billed to cost N11.5bn when it was awarded some years ago.
Once completed, the building will comprise 12 floors,
including a parking space in two floors. But the party said the hope of
completing the secretariat lies on its ability to secure the services of a
developer that would handle it, with an agreement on how it would recoup its
money.
The National Publicity Secretary of the party, Chief Olisa
Metuh, stated this in an exclusive interview with a correspondent in Abuja on
Wednesday. Metuh also debunked the rumour making the rounds that
members of the National Working Committee of the party got a huge sum of money
from the fund realized for its Presidential campaign early in the year.
He said,
“During our sales of forms, we had planned to use substantial part of the money to complete the secretariat.
“We also had a fund-raising dinner where money was raised and we were told that about N21bn was raised and that some of it would be given to us for the completion of the secretariat but we didn’t see the money.”
Source
The PUNCH
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