The leadership of the Labour Party has assured that the recommendation made by its 2023 presidential candidate, Peter Obi, for a forensic audit to be carried out on LP accounts has not been discarded.
This was confirmed in two separate interviews with the Chief Spokesman for the Labour Party Campaign Organisation, Yunusa Tanko, and the National Publicity Secretary of the LP, Obiora Ifoh.
The clamour for an independent audit firm to probe the party account was prompted after the National Treasurer of LP, Oluchi Oparah, (now suspended) challenged the National Chairman, Julius Abure, to account for an alleged N3.5bn raised from the sale of nomination forms and fundraising activities in the build-up to the 2023 general elections.
Opara also accused Abure of refusing to remit the donations received from Nigerians in Diaspora during Obi’s election campaign tour in the United States.
But the Edo politician denied all her allegations when he featured as a guest on Arise News in the wake of the allegation.
Armed with some documents and copies of cheques allegedly signed by the treasurer, Abure lamented that the corruption allegations against him were orchestrated to dent his image.
Wading in, Obi called for an audit of the party’s account to clear the air.
The call by Obi was supported by the 36 state chairmen of the Labour Party.
However, one month after the recommendation was made by Obi and other party stakeholders, nothing was heard about the case again.
When contacted, Tanko reassured our reporter that the matter had not been swept under the carpet as speculated.
He said, “That particular process is still on. What is needed now is just to make the books (account) available and we will take it from there. It is an ongoing issue.
“Don’t also forget that INEC itself has conducted its own audit of the account of every political party. They always send their internal auditors to audit every account and publish the outcome. Nobody is sweeping anything under the carpet as you alleged.”
On his part, Ifoh told our correspondent:
“We must state clearly that our leader Peter Obi made reference to the audit of the campaign account and not the forensic audit for the Labour Party. In any case, we have stated clearly that the party is open to a forensic audit of its accounts.
“We are even calling on the NLC to send its own external auditors to check our financial books. We are also calling on Peter Obi to expedite action on the auditing of our accounts.”
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