Several delegates to the just concluded National Convention of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, from Cross River State are angered and are silently insisting that the leadership of the party in the state may have shortchanged them by paying most delegates a paltry N130, 000 (one thirty thousand naira only), less than the N250, 000 (two hundred and fifty thousand naira) they claim they were supposed to receive at the convention.
“…Our state is f..ked. You can’t imagine that Cross River delegates were given 130k, isn’t that funny? Ours was the least payment made. I was so angry and had to leave the Eagle Square”, one delegate told www.calitown.com. A few persons spoken to by our reporter on the ground in Abuja suspect that several persons in the top echelon of the party in the state connived to deny delegates of their money.
But in a swift reaction to this allegation, Edim Inok Edim, State Chairman of the PDP insisted to www.calitown.com over the phone today that, “no money was given to any delegate at all. I have even read on social media that chairmen like myself were given N5 million each but I can tell ypu that I did not see that kind of money and nobody offered to give me that kind of money. I will be happy if you can mention the names of those delegates who say they were given N130, 000; I don’t work with rumours, if you give me their names, I will be able to properly respond”. Because we are duty bound to protect our news sources, we did not oblige his request.
Another government source who was not a delegate but was in Abuja maintained to www.calitown.com that, “this our situation is always like this; dog eat dog. Because the process that threw up our delegates was faulty, you cannot expect to get positive outcomes. If the state chairman of the party says no money at all was given to the delegates, it is unfortunate and could mean he cannot be trusted with the truth. It is not a crime in my estimation to see people lobby delegates with cash gifts, it is a standard political practice, that he denied that our delegates were given cash just authenticates the gist that some of them at the top tampered with what the delegates should rightly get; the vicious circle continues I must say”.
