The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, recently held its South-South Congress in the Garden City of Port Harcourt where Chief Dan Orbih, an icon of the party and stormy petrel in the political landscape of Edo State as former State Chairman, emerged as the leader of the party in the Geo-Political Zone and one of the Deputy National Chairmen.
While the euphoria of the very well attended Congress and emergence of an Edo son as the Zonal Chairman is still on, the Chairman of the party in Edo State, Dr. Tony Aziegbemi, is getting enmeshed in financial sleaze in his handling of monies graciously allocated by the State Government under Governor Godwin Obaseki to help augment spending by delegates and party leaders who attended the event.
Report reaching us is that Dr. Tony Aziegbemi is personally handling who gets what and how and in so doing delibrately undercutting some delegates and party leaders whom he is either not in good standing with or unaware of the provision by the State Government, while dolling out freely to his political allies. This is causing consternation and rumbling within the party which is capable of taking the shine off an otherwise very successful exercise despite last ditch attempt to scuttle the process by some court injunction emanating from Cross Rivers State.
When contacted on the matter a leader of the party who wishes to remain anonymous confirmed the racketeering going on under Tony Aziegbemi’s watch and direct machinations. He stated “yes I can confirm to you that some financial malfeasance is being perpetuated by Rt. Hon. Dr. Anthony Aziegbemi, the Chairman of the party in Edo State. He is releasing money only to those he wants to or those who are aware and demanded release of their due. Even then not everyone gets his nod. Some who are his political adversaries are shut out even when they demanded their money be released.
I can authoritatively tell you that he even had the audacity to strike out the name of one of the leaders of the party from Edo North who is a National Delegate simply because he knows this media mogul would not request for the stipend. This is clearly a fraudulent act and the overall intent is to cream as much as he can which is a shameful display of pilfering. People should be given what is their due without necessarily having to come pay obeisance to a king and kiss his ring”.
Asked what he thinks should be done he stated ” I think the Governor should set up a team to investigate how the allocated funds were disbursed as it is not transparent the way it is currently being handled. It is fraught with clear fraudulent intent to expropriate funds intended for the party delegates and leaders. If the Governor, who is reputed to be very prudent and not given to financial wastefulness, has been so magnanimous in facilitating this”palliative” then it is sad that someone with a dubious intent, suffering from poverty mentality, would undermine such a gesture through such vile criminal intent” he concluded.
Attempts by our correspondent to reach the party Chairman on the matter was unsuccessful as at the time of reporting.