The Media subcommittee of the Convention Planning Committee of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has described the media report claiming it spent the whooping sum of N800 million on the media for the recently help National Convention of the party as “strange news”, which is “totally untrue”.
In a statement issued by the Secretary of the Subcommittee, Mallam Garba Shehu, the subcommittee, which was co-chaired by the governor of Nasarawa State, Abdullahi Sule, and the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, the subcommittee, despite submitting a request for N360 million for its budget, only received a grant of N100 million for its job.
Discrediting the news report, which was published by a national daily, the subcommittee said it could boldly stand to say if such a huge amount was spent on media works for the convention, its members were, and still are, unaware of the what, who, when and how it was expended.
“The report in the Daily Telegraph that the Media Subcommittee of the Convention Planning Committee of the All Progressives Congress, APC, led the Abdullahi Sule, the Governor of Nassarawa State, co-chaired by Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the Minister of Information and Culture, spent a whopping amount of N800 million is strange news, totally untrue.
“If that huge amount of money was spent on media work at the convention, we make bold to say that we were, and still are unaware of the what, who, when and how it was expended. The Subcommittee, which I served as Secretary got the total sum of N100 Million only. We thank the Governor for giving us venue, tea and coffee.
“We submitted a budget of about N360 Million. When the Finance Subcommittee told that even the N100 paid us was in excess of our budgetary allocation, we scrambled backwards, canceling commitments duly entered into for billboards, production of documentaries, lamp pole ads and so many other things. Some we could cancel, others were irreversible.
“On the assurances given by our leaders, we negotiated a token of commitment to TV networks for Live Coverage, with everyone agreeing that was a must-do for the convention. At the very end, we could only pay half of that amount to each of the stations, hoping that the leadership of the party will take responsibility for the payment of the balances due as a matter of honor.
“The expenses sheet accounting for the N100 Million and the detailed report of the work by the Subcommittee has since been sent to the party and shared with the committee leaders and its membership.”
Credit: The Nation
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