PDP Crisis: Orbih Asks Ayu To Come Clean On Payments To NWC Members

The national vice chairman, South-South of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Chief Dan Orbih has challenged the party’s national chairman, Senator Iyorcha Ayu to speak up on the controversial payments made to members of the National Working Committee, NWC tagged as housing allowance.

GWG.NG had earlier reported that six members of the NWC had returned various sums of money they claimed were surreptitiously paid into their bank accounts.

While party officials have said that it was for housing allowance, Orbih in an interview demurred saying that the payment had been passed off variously as a loan and as accommodation allowance.

Orbih who spoke in an interview with The PUNCH in Abuja said he had cleared his conscience.

He said, “I don’t want to talk about Ayu. I speak for myself. I have done what I feel is needful. I have given reasons for doing what I have done. Let every man carry the full weight of his problem. Ayu should speak for himself. He is an adult. It was very clear in my letter,” Orbih said in a challenge to Ayu to speak up on the payments to the NWC members.

“If it is in a civilised society, people should be praising and commending us for what we have done. Instead, they will be asking them questions to make them justify what they did. It is wrong.

“They, first of all, said it was a loan. I asked where is my loan application? And if it is a loan, where is the repayment plan by me, signed between me and the party? And I asked the third question, when has PDP turned into a bank that gives loans to people?

“That was how they ran away from there and started saying it is accommodation allowance. Is it the house you want them to pay for (rent not buy) made of gold or is it diamond built? 90 per cent of us, including Ayu, have a house here in Abuja. So, I don’t know. What is the take-home of Nigeria’s President, including accommodation allowance? What is bad is bad.

“I am not taking any steps. We have done what our conscience says is the right thing to do. Every person has a conscience, a name to protect. If others do not feel there is nothing wrong with it, that is their business. I didn’t say other people should do it or not do it. They all have their consciences.

“I even saw in a paper on Sunday that such thing was brought before the NWC, the decision was taken by every person, the decision was taken in a meeting. I have challenged them that they should produce the minutes of the meeting and the date the meeting took place and who voted for that and who did not.

“I can tell you for sure that there was no meeting that the issue came to the NWC. I have never seen a country like this. Some said the money was paid on the 14th and why did it take me over 5-6 days? With the type of insecurity in this country, how many people put alerts on their phones?

“I normally reconcile my account at the end of every month. The story by a paper on September 26 was what triggered off this whole crisis. If not, I would have seen it at the end of the month,” Orbih said following the charge to Ayu to speak on the payments to the NWC members.

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