Name those who gave you N13m, APC challenges Wadume

The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has denied the claim by the alleged notorious kidnapper, Hamisu Balla, a.k.a Wadume, that the party made a sum of N13 million available to him during the last presidential elections.

Wadume has been in the middle of the raging storm between the Nigerian Army and the Nigeria Police over the murder of three police operatives and two civilians by soldiers in Ibi town, Taraba State.

An Army Captain in charge of the 93 Battalion, Wukari was also alleged to have aided his escape after his initial arrest by the police.

Wadume in his statement made to the Police after he was re-arrested in Kano had confessed collecting N6m from a sitting governor on the platform of the People’s Democratic Party, N13m from APC in the last presidential election and defrauded a civil servant of N30m.

But the APC national secretariat on Saturday night denied knowledge of the claim.

The party national publicity secretary, Mallam Lanre Isa-Onilu in a statement challenged the suspect to name anyone who gave him money.

Onilu declared that his party “would never allocate money for kidnappers and murderers.”

The statement read in part: “It is expected that the alleged kidnapper, having come face to face with justice, would throw whatever he could lay his hands on into the fray. In any case, our party did not have a budget for thugs.

“Unlike the period when the ruling party dipped hands into the public treasury to fund political campaigns and elections, APC had to rely on its own resources. Even if we had all the money, we would never allocate money for kidnappers and murderers. That era ended with PDP.

“Perhaps, he can name whoever gave him money. Definitely, it was not APC. From his purported confession, he claimed to be a PDP member before he went on to contest under another party.”