Interesting! How I Spent N100m Anenih Gave Me — Falae

Former Secretary to the Government of the Federation and
National Leader of the Social Democratic Party, Chief Olu Falae, has said the
N100m he collected from a former Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party’s
Board of Trustees, Chief Tony Anenih, was fully remitted to his party.

Falae, a former presidential candidate of the Alliance for
Democracy, told Sunday Punch in an interview on Saturday that the SDP and the
PDP has a written agreement on the endorsement of the latter’s presidential
candidate in the 2015 election, former President Goodluck Jonathan.

He said, “The PDP’s Board of Trustees’ chairman came to me
in Akure to seek our support. We gave him six conditions; that they should have
zero tolerance for corruption, create job for the unemployed, fight insurgency
and restore security in Nigeria, reduce recurrent expenditure to have money for
capital development, etc; that if they (PDP) accept those conditions, we would
support them.”

According to him, the former ruling party agreed to the
terms orally.

Falae explained that he later wrote to Anenih, who wrote
back to accept the conditions. “That was the basis for our cooperation to
support their presidential candidate; that was the purpose for which the money
was given,” he stated.

Part of the $2.1bn arms procurement fund allegedly diverted
by former National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki (retd.), was said to
have been allegedly used to fund the electioneering of the PDP in the 2015
general elections.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission had traced the
fund to the PDP, which also used part of the fund to mobilise other political
parties to support President Goodluck Jonathan’s re-election bid.

The ex-Minister of Finance noted that both SDP and the PDP
did not discuss money during the negotiation, while the conditions given were
in the best interest of the country.

He said, “They realised that the SDP had no money; we had no
government (post). He (Anenih) said without money, we would not be able to be
effective. So, he sent us the money, which I passed on to the SDP and it was
distributed to all the states (chapters) of the federation, while our people
were instructed to campaign for their presidential candidate during the
election. This was the story.”

When Falae was asked to confirm his alleged failure to remit
all the money to the party, he said, “It is a lie. I am the chief fundraiser
for the party and the money I (have) raised and remitted to the party is well
over N200m.”

He pointed out that the party has its own bank account where
money passes, while there were other executives of the party who knew about its
finances.

“My integrity cannot be impugned by unserious people. They
wanted to drag us into Dasukigate; they couldn’t do that. The money we got was
remitted to the party for the election,” he said.