Nigeria’s Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed
The Governor of Kwara State, AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq has accused the Information and Culture Minister, Lai Mohammed of duping him of hundreds of millions of naira donated to him for his governorship campaign back in 2019.
AbdulRazaq who made the accusation in an interview with This Day, said Mohammed diverted millions of naira in campaign funds donated to him as support for his governorship ambition.
The governor said even though he and the minister are in the same political party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), the latter did not contribute to his emergence as a governor in their state.
“The Chief of Staff to the Kaduna State Governor called and said Lai gave us an account but it’s not going through, ‘can you give us another account so we can send you the money?’ But I was going to campaign so I said fine.
“I came back two days later and remembered, and I said they should call him and give him an account number. When we called, he said Lai had sorted it out. That one and several. Until today, as we speak, he never told anybody that he collected money.
“There’s a businessman from the South-East. His banker came to me and said his Oga (boss) wants (sic) to speak with me. I spoke with him and he said he was sending money to me. I said, thank you very much. After the election, he called me to congratulate me.
“When he saw I was just saying ‘thank you’, then he asked if Lai didn’t deliver the money, I asked him what money? He said N100 million,” the governor said.
The Kwara State Governor has been at loggerheads with Buhari’s Information Minister for some time, since the State’s APC revalidation exercise in which Mohammed claimed malpractice by the governor’s camp.
Although, Lai Mohammed previously denied stealing campaign funds, saying instead that he used his own money to fund AbdulRazaq’s election, AbdulRazaq’s allegations means the crisis in Kwara APC was far from over.
