More trouble has continued to come the way of the Director of Finance of former President Goodluck Jonathan’s Presidential Campaign Organisation, Senator Esther Nenadi Usman, over the role she played in the disbursement of huge public cash to state chapters of the Peoples Democratic Party in the Northeast ahead of the poll.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Wednesday, subjected Mrs. Usman to many hours of grilling, demanding to know from her, how the N23 billion, which the former Petroleum Minister, Mrs. Diezani Alison Madueke, made available to her to disburse to PDP faithful to influence the outcome of the 2015 presidential election in favour of its presidential candidate, was shared.
The questioning of Usman, which took place at the Gombe Zonal Office of EFCC, was the first in relation to the sharing of the N23 billion from the former oil minister, was her first in the Northeast office but one of many to the EFCC in recent times. Usman, who is standing trial for receiving another N4.2 billion from the Office of the National Security Adviser and disbursing same to top PDP politicians, including Femi Fani-Kayode, reportedly told interrogators that she did not know that the money she was asked to share to PDP bigwigs, came from the National treasury.
She told interrogators that the list and the formula for sharing the cash was given to her by Diezani and that there was no way she could have refused to do the job given the fact that she was a loyal party official. Usman admitted taking instructions from Diezani on how to share the cash meant for the six states in the Northeast states of Gombe, Borno, Taraba, Adamawa, Bauchi and Yobe.
(Vanguard)
