NCC Sabotaging Buhari Presidential Campaign's Fundraising – Fashola
BEVERLY HILLS, January 22, (THEWILL) – The National Communication Commission (NCC) has been accused of sabotaging the campaign of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential Candidate, General Muhammadu Buhari.
The Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babatunde Fashola (SAN), who is also the director of the fundraising committee of the APC Campaign made the accusation Thursday as he alleged that the NCC on Wednesday shut down about 35350 SMS platform used for raising fund for the Buhari presidential campaign.
He said Nigerians donating to the Buhari campaign were expected to send APC to the 35350 to contribute N100 to the campaign using MTN, Glo, Etisalat, Airtel and Visaphone.
But according to Fashola, “The NCC has shut down the 35350 platform for sending N100 message to the Buhari's fund raising campaign yesterday afternoon. Before it was shut down, 5,400 people have contributed N100 to the Buhari campaign fund using the platform.”
He said since Wednesday, he had been receiving messages from people wanting to contribute that they could not get through to the line because NCC had shut it down.
Fashola made the allegation while speaking with journalists in Lagos therefore called on President Goodluck Jonathan to use his good offices in directing NCC to reopen the platform, though he accused the President of intolerance.
While accusing the NCC of double standard, Fashola said a similar approval was granted in 2010 for President Jonathan /Sambo campaign organization, wondering why that of Buhari would be shut down.
According to Fashola, “The point to make first is that as a political party and campaign group, we have not received official communication from NCC directed at us. As I said, they were using the platform of business houses and commercial concerns. So these letters were directed to them to interfere with their commercial transactions. But the subsequent and ripple effect is that our campaign suffers by their interference in a service they are contracted to render.
“The reality also is that apart from the letter from NCC, the Minister for Communication, Mrs. Omobola Johnson, has personally been pressurising and calling the operators of telecodes, putting pressures on them not to run our messages and I think this is very low.
” As far as court action is concerned, certainly all legal means pertaining to protect our rights to communicate and carry our campaign messages will be within the ambits of what we will explore . But as you also might be aware, the entire nation's judiciary has been shut down and so for a government and party that is preaching peace and there is no resort to the judiciary. This has never happened in the history of this Nigeria.”