The Chairman of the Northern Elders Forum, NEF, Alhaji Tanko
Yakassai, has released the details of how his
group expended the N53m allocated to it during the 2015 presidential elections.
Controversy has trailed the disbursement of the funds with accusations galore as to how a lot of the money was spent with many of the opinion that the $2.1b Arms money was also diverted to their group.
The NEF Chairman confirmed that a former
Chairman of the PDP Board of Trustees (BoT),
Chief Tony Anenih, spent his money on the
assignment on the instruction of then
President Goodluck Jonathan .
The former presidential adviser said in
an exclusive chat with the Vanguard, that he was making the details available to the world to correct the
information in the public domain that the
funds made available to his group were part
of the $2.1 billion arms money.
Indeed, many PDP leaders are questioning the
propriety of the conclusions of the investigation into the activities in the Office of
the National Security Adviser, ONSA, which
claimed that some individuals received funds
without contracts or that contracts were awarded without documentation or that some of the contracts awarded were bogus. Names
of those who allegedly collected funds from
the ONSA have already been published.
Yakassai with this in mind, gave an activity-by-activity
breakdown of the expenditure.
From the looks of it, the breakdown of the expenditure
profile by the Yakassai group indicated that
there is an outstanding balance of N16 million
to be claimed.
Yakassai, who made the document of the
breakdown available
revealed thus:
“Please find below full statement of the
expenses incurred during our tour of 17
northern states and the FCT, sponsored by
Chief Tony Anenih, on the directive of former
President Goodluck Jonathan from January 14
to February 14, 2015”.
According to Yakassai, “States visited were
Sokoto, Kebbi, Kaduna, Kano, Jigawa,
Zamfara, Katsina, Nasarawa, Kogi, Niger,
Ilorin, BenueBenue, Plateau, Adamawa, Taraba,
Bauchi and Gombe”.
He identified members of his team as Alhaji
Sule Iyaji; Senator Abubakar D. Sodangi;
Ambassador M.Z. Anka; Chief John Mankilik;
Alhaji Sulaiman Lawal; Dr. Luka Bahago; and
Barrister Bitrus Gwadah, Personal Assistant,
with himself as team leader.
Yakassai said members’ allowance was at N250,000 for eight members for 21 days, the sum of which came to N42,000,000.
He disclosed that return tickets for Abuja-
Sokoto, Abuja-Kano, Abuja-Ilorin, Abuja-Yola/
Jallingo Abuja-Bauchi/Gombe plane trips were
at a cost of N50,000 and the total came to
N2,250,000.
Yakassai put hotel accommodation of
N30,000 per night for nine persons for five
nights.
The elder statesman further said payments to
personal assistants was N20,000 per person,
while the Christian Association of Nigeria,
CAN, delegation from Plateau State, which
visited Anenih, got N2,000,000.
Yakassai was of the opinion that such a budget was modest considering the individuals involved.
The NEF Chairman further put the outstanding
claims for his assisgnment at N16,850,000.
The breakdown for this, according to Yakassai,
is as follows: Car hire for seven persons for 25
days at N50,000 totals N8,750,000,
accommodation at other places N6,000,000
and Plateau Special Delegation got
N2,100,000.
The Chairman stated that the release of this breakdown was to clear the air.