Twenty-five days to the February 14 presidential election, the All Progressives Congress (APC) has unveiled the various platforms through which Nigerians can make cash donations towards the success of its candidate, Mohammadu Buhari and his running mate, Yemi Osinbajo.
However, anonymous donations will not be acceptable. The fundraising committee is of the view that all donors must be identified in order to enable the committee acknowledge and appreciate their contributions towards “the change that will soon become a reality in Nigeria”.
Lagos State governor, Babatunde Fashola, who is the chairman of the fund raising committee, at a news conference in Lagos, Tuesday, announced five platforms through which the party expects Nigerians who believe in its “change” message can make their donations. These, according to Fashola, include lodgement in banks; donation via electronic transactions; premium short message (SMS); subscription to ring tones and scratch card.
Giving details, Fashola who was flanked by Wale Edun, a former finance commissioner in Lagos and Ben Akabueze, sitting commissioner for economic planning and budget in Lagos, said the party has entered into a commercial agreement with five banks, Access Bank, GTBank, First Bank, Ecobank and Zenith Bank, with customised tellers which will be available in all the branches of the affected banks nationwide. He gave the account number as APCGMBPYO.
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For those donating through the e-transaction platform, the governor said they will need to log in on www.apcgmbpyo.org and can use any of the smart cards- Master, Visa or Verve. To make donations via SMS on any of the network providers, the donor, according to Fashola, will be expected to send APCGMBPYO to the short code- 35350. However, the SMS platform allows a donor a maximum of N100 at a time but the donor can donate as many times as possible.
For donations via ring tones, the donor will download APCGMBPYO ringtone which will be available in all the networks costing N100, while with the scratch card platform, a donor buys the customised ‘scratch card’ from any of the networks, scratch it and dial*979*22*PIN# and send.
The governor said the scratch cards will be available in denominations of N100, N200, N500, N750 and N1,500.
Fashola assured that all donations will be channelled into the Buhari/Osinbajo presidential campaign expenses and will take care of agent fees, honorarium, advertisements, transportation fares, legal services where necessary and printing of campaign materials to be distributed across Nigeria.
“We will definitely not use it to build party secretariat. We cannot collect money from Nigerians to build party secretariat. Building of party secretariat is the responsibility of the party members,” said the governor.
The ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) late last year had raised about N21 billion for President Goodluck Jonathan re-election bid.
