Yesterday, during the trial of Olisa Metuh, an aide to former Vice-President Namadi Sambo, Mr. Abba Dabo, who testified before the trial court as the 7th prosecution witness, PW-7, explained before the Abuja Division of the Federal High Court, why he returned the N25m given to him by Metuh.
He said: “When it became obvious that former President Goodluck Jonathan will run for a second term in office, government officials and party leaders started to meet to review the achievements of the government and prepare for the elections.
In the course of those meetings, a lot of concern was shown in the opposition’s total control of the media. The PDP was getting negative publicity, and ministers were told to speak more to the press to enhance the image of the government.
On my part, we set up a media support group and registered it as ‘Media Support System’ to do media work for the party. We commissioned writers to write and be paid to promote the government. As at then, the social media was becoming more stringent in the criticism of the PDP.
Chief Metuh thought I could assist in mitigating this, that was why he gave me the N25m. With that money, we set up a team of facilitators and young IT enthusiasts to run a website called, ‘What’s Up Naija’, but we could not register it because the Corporate Affairs Commission, CAC, wanted it to be ‘What’s Up Nigeria.’
It was in the newspaper that I saw that the money was part of the arms purchase deal. When the money was given to me, I did not know where it came from and I did not ask. In view of that, I decided to return the money back to the EFCC.”….. although I had spent N20k out of it…..
