A chieftain of the Labour Party and Chairman of the Fundraising Team of the Obi-Datti Campaign Organisation, Aisha Yesufu has been caught in another financial scandal over usage of funds donated by Nigerians both at home and in the diaspora towards the presidential campaign of the Labour Party presidential candidate in the 2023 presidential election, Mr. Peter Obi.
This latest financial scandal came to light following an escalation in the leadership crisis rocking the Labour Party after Mr. Peter Obi and Gov. Alex Otti ditched embattled national chairman of the party Julius Abure and constituted a National Caretaker Committee headed by former Finance Minister, Mrs Esther Nenadi Usman.
Julius Abure, in a press conference he called to kick against the outcome of the Umuahia stakeholders meeting alleged among other things that Aisha Yesufu and Pastor Itua Ighodalo were in charge of the Fundraising Team of the Obi-Datti Campaign Organisation and that the party leadership was not involved in managing donations from the public, which was why Aisha Yesufu and Pastor Itua Ighodalo were responsible for the payment of polling unit agents of the party.
Abure therefore countered that he could not have been held responsible for the failure of Mr. Peter Obi in the 2023 presidential election especially in the chaotic handling of the Labour Party agents issue.
However, one of the accused persons in the Fundraising Team and a controversial figure in the Labour Party setup, Aisha Yesufu immediately responded to the allegations by Julius Abure in a video she posted on YouTube and described Abure’s accusations as a big fat lie and a misrepresentation.
“That statement Abure made was a big, fat lie. There were times when the fundraising team was frustrated with me because of my insistence on due process,” she started.
“Before Obi came out with his campaign account, the Labour Party had theirs. I have here a Labour Party N1,000 challenge post that was tweeted on November 24, 2022. When that account was opened by Abure, I was very angry. I remember some people harmlessly saying it was no big deal since it was for the same Labour Party campaign.
“But I insisted that it is not the same thing because we don’t have access to any money that went into the LP account and therefore can’t use it to facilitate the electioneering campaign.
“So for Julius Abure to come out in 2024 to blatantly lie that they were not involved in any campaign, saying it was only Aisha Yesufu and Pastor Itua (is unbelievable).
“By the way, there are three signatories, not two as he said. Up till now, the LP has not accounted for the money the public donated to them neither have they accounted for the money used to procure forms.”
On the issue of payments to Labour Party agents, Aisha Yesufu claimed that the Abure leadership gave her fictitious names to pay as LP agents during the election.
“There is a statement that Mr Abure made that they had made the polling units agent list available. That is a lie,” she said.
“The party didn’t want to release the polling agent list. We kept asking for it. On the day of the election, after they finally gave us the party agent list…we started paying the polling agents then something was amiss.
“Remember people started saying they were not seeing polling party agents in their places. Most of the agents that worked were actually Obidients.
“So, randomly we were calling the (phone) numbers that we had. You will call someone, maybe the name (on the list) is male but a female will answer and say they don’t know what we are talking about. What polling unit agent? It was like magic. And immediately I asked my team to stop payment.
“The Abure and his team — they have hated my guts after the election because of one thing: those monies were kept in my hands and I refused to send it to them.
“So, when I noticed that something was amiss, I said stop all the payments. I think we had paid about two to three thousand (people), I can’t remember. We just started payment, I said to my team, stop all the payments, something fishy is happening. That was when we realised that those Abure people – Labour Party had given us fictitious names. Most of the names there weren’t the names we were supposed to pay, they had been changed. If they want to go to court, please let us all meet in the court”, she said.
According to Aisha Yesufu, over N1billion was budgeted to be paid to over 13,000 polling agents and that her finance team has accounted for how money donated for the campaign was expended.
“We are ready for anyone who wants to scrutinize the account at any time. Accountability and transparency were the bedrock of which we ran that campaign fundraising,” she said.
Aisha Yesufu contradicts earlier account on payment of labour party agents…
Yesufu’s claim that between two to three thousand people had been paid before she ordered that payment be stopped has raised further questions of accountability and cast doubts on the credibility of the statement of account she earlier reeled out in February 2024 where she claimed that N324,381,700 was spent on polling unit agents in the presidential election.
In that report Yesufu had said, “so, out of these things, campaign materials worth N258,374,330 were procured and distributed across the 36 States and also in Abuja. Media and radio broadcasting was at the cost of N16,432,867.”
“For election promotion expenses, the sum of N10,808,948 was spent from the purse, while for Polling Unit Agents, we spent N324,381,700. And then, of course, we had bank charges of N1,750,544. We also had administrative charges of N477,000. The Campaign team deployed N744,500,000 to cover legal expenses while other campaign and election activities gulped over N28,500,000”, Aisha Yesufu reported in February.
A quick look at the N324,381,700 she said was expended to pay labour party agents and her recent claims that she stopped payment after paying between two to three thousand party agents reveals an obvious red flag. The question some Nigerians are asking is, did Aisha Yesufu spend N324.38 million on just two to three thousand party agents? Most of the party agents of Labour Party that were paid (by Aisha Yesufu and her team) received N10,000 as stipends.
Yesufu herself said that N1 billion was budgeted for payment of party agents. LP in the 2023 presidential submitted 134,874 polling unit agents. This means LP were never going to pay more than N10,000 to its PU agents.
Using the higher figure of three thousand people that Yesufu acknowledged were paid before she stopped payments, this would amount to N30 million only assuming each received N10,000. What happened to the balance of N294.38 million? From the defence of Aisha Yesufu to Abure’s accusations of financial fraud, it appears she may have unwittingly shot herself on the feet by acknowledging paying only 2000-3000 LP party agents.
There is also no way payment of just 3000 party agents would have gulped N324.38 million unless each of the agents received N108,127 each, which is nigh impossible. Even if collation agents of the party at the ward, LGA, State and national levels were to be added, the figures would still not add up. Nigeria has 8809 wards, 774 LGAs, 36 states and the FCT.
Assuming LP had complete number of collation agents at each of these collation levels (which was not the case), that would amount to 9622 agents. At an average stipend of N20,000 for the 8809 ward collation agents, that would amount to N176.18 million. At say N50,000 to the LGA agents, it would amount to N38.7 million and at N100,000 for each state collation agent, it will amount to N3.7 million for the 36 states and the FCT. Let’s assume LP sent two agents to the national collation center and were paid N500,000 each, that would amount to N1 million.
These payments enumerated above total N249.58 million. This still leaves a difference of N74.8 million. So, from whatever angle a basic scrutiny is carried out, the February account of Aisha Yesufu seriously contradicts her latest revelations occassioned by her spat with the LP National Chairman, Julius Abure.
This latest financial scandal adds to the growing list of frauds and allegations of embezzlement involving key figures of the Labour Party including members of the Obidient movement especially those who were prominent in promoting “a New Nigeria is POssible” narrative during the 2023 presidential election campaign.
These bad stench of financial indiscipline and corruption emanating from the Labour Party and the Peter Obi team severely dents the credibility of the Labour Party or Mr. Peter Obi as a clean alternative different from the establishment political parties and those they describe as old order or structure of criminality.