The Peoples Democratic Party Staff Welfare Association has alleged that the party’s National Publicity Secretary, Mr. Olisa Metuh, worked against the re-election of former President Goodluck Jonathan.
The aggrieved workers made this known in a statement by the chairman of their association, Ngozi Nze and secretary, Dan Ochu-Baiye in Abuja on Saturday.
According to the workers, Metuh worked against Jonathan because he lost the post of the Director of Publicity of the Presidential Campaign to Mr. Femi Fani-Kayode.
The statement read: “We have incontrovertible evidence that the man who is PDP Publicity Secretary worked assiduously against the presidential candidate of the PDP, former President Goodluck Jonathan in the last election in order to requite the ex-President for rejecting him as Director of Publicity of the Presidential Campaign which was given to Mr.Femi Fani-Kayode, a development which came after Metuh had squandered a whooping sum of N450m media fund earlier approved for the office of PDP Publicity Secretary by Jonathan.”
The association also described as an absolute bunkum, a clumsy, and blundering blackmail, an allegation by Metuh that the staff members were being sponsored by the ruling All Progressives Congress.
The workers said that such a weak shot from a “mortally crippled arsenal of witch-hunt is incapable of breaking the resolve of the staff to expose the thieving band in the NWC and restore the core vision of the party.”
“We are not surprised that the allegation will become the most fashionable means of covering tracks,” the statement said.
The angry workers are also asking the NWC members to account for the over N12bn which they said were squandered by them in just nine months.
According to them, “We therefore place on record that the majority of the establishment staff of the PDP are not just unrepentant members of the party who have spent over 16 years in service; who have assimilated the PDP ethos as a way of political life but are also the repository of the party’s institutional memory whose spirit can hardly succumb to the ephemerality of power loss.”
They alleged that in the January 2010 Anambra governorship election, Metuh as National Vice-Chairman, South-East abandoned Prof. Chukwuma Soludo, the PDP candidate while openly galvanizing support for Hope Democratic Party candidate, who they described as his friend and benefactor.
“The PDP did not only woefully lose in Otolo Nnewi Ward 1 of the Party’s zonal Vice Chairman but came a distant third in his polling booth! What a faithful party officer!”
They asked Metuh to explain what he did with “the huge sum of N70m that he collected in July in the name of fighting the APC in the media.”
In his reaction, Metuh through his aide, Mr. Richard Ihediwa, said he was ready for probe, adding that those behind the statement chose to drift away from issues and narrowed on him.
He said such was not unexpected given the his role in “rebuilding his party and how uncomfortable the APC has been for his outspokenness.
“We are aware that the anti-PDP forces have easily found a handful of disgruntled PDP employees as willing tools to attack Metuh with a view to bringing him to public odium, distract him and deny our party a credible voice to propagate its positions.
“These forces had even gone to the extent of engineering some discontented PDP members to portray statements by the National Publicity Secretary as his personal opinions in the attempt to discredit and intimidate him.”
“We make bold to state that Metuh, being aware of the challenges that comes with his new role, has offered himself, his office as well as all his private companies for probe by the Department of State Service or any other government agency for that matter.”
