National chairman of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Chief Olu Falae, has said his party would not return the N100 million he collected from a Chieftain of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Tony Anenih.
The money is said to be from the $2.1million meant for the procurement of arms and received by the Office office of the National Security Adviser (NSA) Sambo Dasuki in the last administration.
Falae had insisted that he had no idea the money he took from Anenih was from the arms fund. He said his party collected the money from the PDP, represented by Anenih and was for the purpose of electoral alliance between the SDP and then ruling party.
READ: I’m ashamed to be linked to Dasuki’s $2.1m scandal – Falae says
He said: “In terms of refund of money, I want to say here that those people who are refunding money are those who got their money directly from the arms deal fund,”
“Our fund did not come from the arms deal; our fund came from an electoral alliance with the PDP and we knew that the PDP had a fundraising committee that gathered billions of naira and PDP had been in government for 16 years.
“So, with that, we knew that the PDP had the capacity to fund the alliance that was formed with them by the SDP. You don’t postulate what you don’t have on the ground, you can’t build on a non-foundation.
“We, as a political party, knew that the PDP was a capable hand in the electoral alliance which we entered with them. And we equally knew that the PDP had a fundraising, where it generated over N20 billion down.”
He noted that Anenih should be asked to explain how he got the money.
“So, whether the money came from Col. Sambo Dasuki or his office is what we don’t know and it is left for them to ask Chief Tony Anenih to explain”, he said. “We knew that the PDP had been ruling Nigeria for 16 years. So, this was the basis of our electoral alliance with them.”
Falae stressed that the SDP cannot refund any money as the party never had anything to do with the Office of the National Security Adviser (NSA).
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