Updated: March 2, 2021
The Buhari Media Organization (BMO) has described failure by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to complete its 12-storey national secretariat building in 12 years as the most telling commentary on the party’s record of project execution.
The group said it is not surprising that the former ruling party left thousands of abandoned projects across the country when it could not even complete its own office structure after raising almost thrice the amount required.
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In a statement signed by its Chairman Niyi Akinsiju and Secretary Cassidy Madueke, BMO noted that the story of PDP’s abandoned headquarters epitomises everything that is wrong with that political party.
“This is a party that used its clout as an all-powerful ruling party to arm-twist high net-worth individuals and corporate organizations, amongst others, to jointly contribute as high as N21bn at one sitting in December 2014, six years after N6bn was raised at an initial event for a building that was to cost N10bn and was to be completed in 2011.
“Nigerians may want to recall that four months after the second fundraising ceremony, PDP lost the 2015 election and the then party spokesman Olisa Metuh told the world that the party was cash strapped.
“What the party has not satisfactorily explained is what happened to the funds raised for the structure even when only N2bn was released to the contractors from the N6bn that was realised from the first fundraiser.
“And even after the second ceremony, the party whose leaders promised to ‘Make Nigeria Great Again’ or ‘Grow Nigeria’ in the run-up to the 2015 Presidential election, clearly did not use these funds for what it gleefully announced that they were meant for.
“Today that structure that is incidentally situated along Muhammadu Buhari Way in the Central Business District of Abuja is a clear symbol and reminder of the forlorn state that the party left Nigeria after 16 years of high oil receipts, with little or nothing to show for it in terms of critical infrastructure,” it added.
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