Nigeria’s ruling party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) has disowned a purported leaked document which went viral on Monday claiming it budgeted ₦6.5 trillion for vote-buying to ensure victory in the 2023 presidential election.
Africa Daily News, New York recalls that the amount quoted is more than one-third of Nigeria’s ₦17.126 trillion 2022 budget.
The APC’s National Publicity Secretary, Mr Felix Morka in a statement on Monday in Abuja, described the document as fake and the handiwork of mischief-makers calling on Nigerians to disregard it.
‘The attention of the APC has been drawn to a document in circulation described as leaked APC 2023 Election Document.
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‘Mischievously, the document alleged that our party has voted a whooping ₦6.5trillion to fund schemes aimed at swaying the Nigerian electorate to support and vote for the party and its presidential candidate in 2023.
‘Ridiculously, too, the document alleged that obscene amounts of money have been voted for outright vote-buying, compromising INEC staff, security operatives, judicial officers and other officials.
‘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,’ Morka said.
The APC scribe went on to wonder how a government operating a national budget of ₦17 trillion would dole out ₦6.5trillion to rig an election.
This, he said clearly betrayed the authors’ extreme ignorance of the complexity of the systems and processes for the appropriation and utilisation of state funds.
He said that the APC was focused on delivering dividends of democracy to Nigerians in hope that they would reciprocate by supporting and voting for its candidates in the 2023 general elections.
He added that the party was law-abiding and had no need to engage in fraud or electoral malpractice to win elections as suggested by the document.
