The Buhari Media Organisation (BMO) has raised alarm ahead of the 2019 elections that Presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, has plans to bring in illicit funds with which to disrupt the elections.
In a statement by its Chairman, Niyi Akinsiju, and Secretary, Cassidy Madueke, the pro Buhari group urged the CBN and other relevant agencies to keep their eyes peeled for movement of large sums of dollars into the country.
“We have it on good authority that the PDP and its presidential candidate are making efforts to bring in public funds, including those from recent sales of assets in Angola which were acquired with illicit funds.” the statement said
“We also know that the former vice president has made promissory transaction commitments on a number of strategic national assets, including the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation and a percentage holding in the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas to a foreign syndicate,”
READ: Ezekwesili lists conditions for violence-free 2019 elections
The Buhari group also added: “It is clear to Atiku Abubakar and the PDP elements that the President Muhammadu Buhari administration has put in place a system that has made it difficult for the type of the situation in 2015 where former Petroleum Resources Minister, Diezani Alison-Madueke, could warehouse $115,000,000, which was then shared among party officials to influence electoral officials.
“So these opposition elements are now working out a more crooked way of bringing in money through the borders in order to circumvent the system before and during the February 2019 elections.”
Atiku in a statement of his own countered the Buhari group’s narrative saying that it was the President, rather than he, who was known for bringing in illegal funds
, “History shows that rather than smuggle in looted cash, Waziri Atiku Abubakar prevented looted funds from being smuggled into Nigeria.”
“In 1984, it was Atiku Abubakar, as head of the Murtala Mohammed International Airport Command of the Nigerian Customs and Excise Department, that stopped the ADC of the then Military Head of State, Muhammadu Buhari, from smuggling in 53 suitcases of looted money into the country.”