CHUKA UBAH
The members of the cabals within the Igbo circle in Lagos State led by Chief Joe Igbokwe and Eze Uche Dimgba are experiencing crisis over how they rented people including non-Igbo people for the purported rally to deceive the APC in Lagos State in order to obtain money from Gov Babajide Sanwo-Olu and Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu for the 2023 election.
P.M.EXPRESS reports that the members of the groups are now battling to cover up their tracks following the leakage of the budget of the summit organized, which they called Ndigbo in APC, demanding from Gov Sanwo-Olu to release to them the sum of N26m for the pro-Tinubu rally in Lagos.
In the detailed memo sent to Igbokwe by Eze Uche Dimgba meant for the Governor, it stated that the rally projected that 4,500 Igbo members would participate in the rally and they will pay 1000 participants rented the sum of N4500 but ended up giving them N1000 each.
Those they claimed they will pay included Ndigbo in APC Lagos covering the executives and leaders in the 20 LGAs and 37 LCDAs, Ohanaeze executives in all LGAs, Igbo-speaking community executives, executives of the 58 major markets in Lagos State and executives of over 100 town unions in Lagos, which was false.
Some of the attendees were angry that the agreement they reached before hiring them was breached and yet they went to request for the money they did not spend from the Governor.
Indeed, the Blue Roof hall, venue of the Town Hall Igbo Summit event, which is located at the Lagos Television, LTV premises, was filled up to capacity with rented people, who abandoned their businesses on the first official working day after the Independence Anniversary holiday to attend the rally, only to be disappointed at the end.
The matter became worse after one of the signatories to the budget sent to the Governor, Hon. Smart Unya, wrote a disclaimer disassociating himself from the budget and stated that he was not aware of the budget and did not consent to it, thereby confirming that the budget was a scam and to prove so, the contact phone numbers were deliberately altered to prevent accessibility to the numbers.
Some of the attendees, mainly from the Arewa community, Edo and Kogi States, were shocked that they were paid N1,000 against the initial amount they had agreed on before they boarded vehicles provided to bring them to the venue.
It was also gathered that other items in the budget like N4.5 million for branded caps, N8.4 million for mobilisation, N1.3 million for a venue, N1.3 million for entertainment, N270,000 for music, and N100,000 for garden eggs, which they claimed to have spent total N26m were false.
In a letter, the group asserted that “a minimum of four thousand five hundred people with PVCs, who are members of our great party APC of Igbo extraction in Lagos” would attend the rally scheduled to be held at Blue Roof hall in Ikeja.
“Therefore, with this number of people, we hereby present to you a very modest budget of approximately twenty-six million four hundred thousand Naira (26,400,000.00) only,” added the letter addressed to Joe Igbokwe, a Special Adviser to the Lagos Governor on drainage and water resources.
Some of the Igbo traders, who attended the summit, said they were there because they were hired and not as a members of the Igbo APC, which means that the purported endorsement was done by Igbokwe, Dimgba and few members of the cabals within the Igbo circle in order to deceive APC in Lagos State.