The ruling All Progressives Congress APC has expressed deep outrage over a document purportedly containing its 2023 general election rigging plans in which it reportedly earmarked N6.5 trillion for the said purpose.

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Apart from using the said funds to sway the Nigerian electorate to support and vote for the Party and its Presidential Candidate in 2023, the document alleged that obscene amounts of money have been voted for outright vote-buying, compromising election officials, security operatives, judicial officers and others.

The document

The 13-page document which was exclusively obtained by Vanguard grouped the states according to the six geopolitical zones.

It also listed four prominent members of the party from each of the zones as those to receive funds meant for each zone.

The document also listed seven farmers’ organizations and multipurpose societies as vehicles to be used in receiving the funds which was broken down into N928, 668, 421, 154.28 (Nine Hundred and Twenty Eight Billion, Six Hundred and Sixty Eight Million, Four Hundred an Twenty One Thousand, One Hundred and Fifty Four Naira, Twenty Eight Kobo) for each of the organizations.

The Funds Coordinating/Disbursement Committee and the Funds Supervising Committee each has six members, including a state governor, a minister, two Presidential Advisers among others.

Its survey of 22 states controlled by the APC shows 110,306 polling units with over 29.804 million voters while PDP with 14 states has 63, 481 polling units with over 17.14 million voters.

By its projection, other parties in the contest would in total score slightly above a million votes while rejected votes would cinstituted 804, 330.

The projection is that APC will have a “winning difference” of over 11.66 million voters.

Under the subheading, “Voters Inducement” the document proposes amounts ranging between N10, 000 and N20, 000 per voter.

With a targetted voter population of 47, 748, 420, the document estimated the sum of over N1.909 trillion to be spent on the voters by giving N20,000 to each person.

The document also voted over N153 billion to be spent on ad-hoc election officials, observers as well as security and defence forces.

Equally, over N3.153 trillion would be spent via programmes like Conditional Funds Transfer, Food Distribution, Free Fertilizer Distribution, Artisans and MSMEs Support Funds, Transportation Support Funds and IDP Support Funds.

In the document, election tribunal expenses is to gulp nearly N153.5 billion while APC Governors would be given o er N730 billion.

APC States and Local Government Area offices are to be given a combined sum of N300 billion while APC Support Groups would get N100 billion.

In total, the document proposes for the ruling to spend N6, 500, 679, 948, 080, that is, Six Trillion, Five Hundred Billion, Six Hundred and Seventy Nine Million, Nine Hundred and Forty Eight Thousand and Eighty Naira.

PDP-sponsored

But the ruling party has accused the opposition Peoples Democratic Party PDP of manufacturing the said document in an attempt to smear its image.

APC said it is a party founded on the rule of law and that it would never seek to engage in electoral malfeasance just so as to gain an unfair electoral advantage over others.

“The APC wishes to place firmly on record that the document is not of the Party. We neither authored nor own any such document, and it certainly did not emanate from our Party”, said Felix Morka, spokesman of the APC.

He alleged that “the document is the handiwork of very sick elements of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in a desperate quest for unmerited electoral advantage by attempting to smear our Party with wrong doing.

“In their zealous attempt to mudsling, the document’s authors senselessly alleged that our Party proposes to apply nearly half of the country’s entire 2022 budget to buy votes. How in the world does a government operating a national budget of N17trillion dole out N6.5trillion to rig elections? It clearly betrays the authors’ extreme ignorance of the complexity of the systems and processes for the appropriation and utilization of state funds.

“Only a party that is a masterful looter of the national treasury such as the PDP can even imagine another capable of engaging in the kinds of atrocious acts the document suggests”, he stated.