I WON'T RETURN A DIME-FALAE

Chief Olu Falae, the National Chairman of the Social Democratic Party,while speaking in Abuja on Monday through the National Publicity Secretary of the SDP at a press conference organised on his behalf has said he owes EFCC no money and so, he won’t return a dime.

Falae insisted that the money he collected on behalf of his party was from a former Chairman, Board of Trustees of the Peoples Democratic Party, Chief Tony Anenih, and PDP and not part of the $2.1bn arms fund  largesse from  office of the former National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki (retd.), meant for the purchase of arms to fight Boko Haram .

Falae who spoke through Dr. Abdulahmed Isiaq 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 fund. Our funds did not come from the arms deal; our funds came from an electoral alliance with the PDP and we knew that the PDP had a fund-raising committee that gathered billions of naira and the PDP had been in government for 16 years. Continue...

“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 into. And we equally knew that the PDP had a fund-raising dinner, where it generated over N20bn. 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.

“We knew that the PDP had been ruling Nigeria for 16 years. So, this was the basis for our electoral alliance with them. We can’t refund any money to anybody because the money we got as a party came because of the alliance we had with the PDP and we have an agreement note for this alliance.

“If it is possible that the money Chief Anenih gave us was from the arms deal, it is left for them to ask Chief Anenih to clarify. As far as we know, we did not have any dealing with Dasuki. Our office did not ever have anything to do with the office or person of the National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki.”

He therefore asked the Federal Government to hold Anenih and the PDP responsible for the source of the money rather than the SDP. He insisted that SDP would not return any money to the government coffers, since the money it got was neither from Dasuki nor the ONSA.