He also mentioned to the court, that the said amount was to enable the Publicity Secretary carry out the very much needed image enhancement for the former president before he was to publicly declare his intention to run for the 2015 general elections.
The Punch Nigeria reports:
A former Senior Special Assistant to
ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, Doyin Okupe, has said the payment of the
N400m to the National Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic
Party, Chief Olisa Metuh, by the office of the National Security Adviser
was authorised by Jonathan.
Okupe said this when he appeared before a Federal High Court in Abuja to testify in defence of Metuh.
The Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission is prosecuting Metuh and his company, Destra Investments
Limited on seven counts, including alleged fraudulent collection of
N400m from the Office of the National Security Adviser in November 2014.
Metuh and his firm allegedly used the fund for the PDP’s presidential campaign ahead of the 2015 election.
Among other charges preferred against
the defendants were money laundering allegations involving cash
transaction of $2m without passing through a financial institution.
Okupe, who appeared before Justice Okon
Abang as the third defence witness, said the payment of the N400m to
Metuh by the NSA’s office was authorised by Jonathan.
He said the instruction given by
Jonathan for the payment of the money to Metuh, followed a presentation
which Metuh’s campaign team made to the then President at the
presidential villa.
Advertisement
Okupe, who was led in evidence by the lead defence counsel, Dr. Onyechi Ikpeazu (SAN), said he attended the meeting during which a consultant engaged by Metuh made the presentation for the PDP’s campaign strategy.
He said Jonathan himself told him after the meeting that he had authorised the payment of the N400m to Metuh.
The witness said, “After the usual
exchange of pleasantries, Mr. President gave a short briefing in line
with what I said earlier.
“He then asked Olisa Metuh and his
consultant to make their presentation which they did. After the
presentation, there were comments from those who attended the meeting.
“The presentation was approved for
action and the President said Mr. Metuh would be given part of the money
that was in budget for the execution of the project. We all left.
“I know from two sources that Mr. Metuh
got the money. The first source was the President himself who told me
that he had instructed that Chief Metuh be mobilized, And that was
during breakfast with Mr. President one morning.
“He told me that he had instructed that
Chief Metuh be mobilised with N400 m. The following day, very early in
the morning, I got a call from Chief Metuh who told me that he had
received N400m from the President.
“Chief Metuh set up a very large
committee of various people, comprising former editors, resource persons
in line with media, publicity, image management and all that. And they
met somewhere in Asokoro. It was a full fledged session. I can testify
that quite a substantial amount of work was done.
“Some of the substantial results were security related but others that had to do with image and perception.”
Under cross examination by counsel for
the EFCC, Mr. Sylvanus Tahir, the witness admitted that government
institutions and agencies were not part of the organs of the party.
When shown one of the exhibits
(e-payment mandate) from the Office of the NSA, detailing the transfer
of the sum N400m to Destra Investment Limited, Okupe claimed he did not
understand the document neither did he know what it was about.
No comments:
Post a Comment