Wednesday, February 12, 2025 - A former presidential candidate of the now-defunct Alliance for New Nigeria, ANN, Fela Durotoye, has claimed he turned down a chance to siphon N5bn in a fraudulent government deal.
According to him, this came amid serious pressure from a government
official, who worked in a previous administration and claimed to be a pastor.
Durotoye stated this while speaking at the biannual conference of the
Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria, PFN, in Abuja, on Tuesday.
According to him, the official approached him with a lucrative training
contract, and claimed he (Durotoye) had already been picked for the job.
He was informed the programme would involve trainings across all 774
local government areas in Nigeria within eight weeks.
Durotoye’s team went ahead to prepare an invoice, calculating a price of
N1.3bn for the training.
“A few years ago, I’ll not say how long, but it’s not this
administration, it’s not last administration it’s a while ago let me leave it
like that,” Durotoye said.
He added: “I got a phone call and it happened to be a Man of God from
Abuja who called me to say Fela, there’s an opportunity that I want you to
explore, in fact let me be clear with you, you have already gotten it.
“But they said the amount I was asking for was too small. They promised
to add N700m to make it N2bn. Then they asked me to submit an invoice for N5b.
“The man assured me he wasn’t ripping off Nigeria.
“He said he had served the country and deserved compensation. When I
reminded him that the blessings of God make one rich and add no sorrow, he
fired back, saying, ‘There is no sorrow in this one. You have been doing well
for Nigeria. It is time for Nigeria to do well for you.’”
As pressure mounted, Durotoye revealed he switched off his phone.
Durotoye said three months after the conversations, some officials in
the presidency were arrested by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission,
EFCC, for stealing N426m from an ethical leadership training fund.
Durotoye also disclosed that he did not earn a salary while serving
under the President Bola Tinubu administration as Special Assistant to the
President.
“I did not collect an official car, I did not collect a house, and I did
not collect a salary for serving.
“It was difficult to get my letter out because, according to somebody in government, my refusal to collect those things would make it difficult to pin me to corruption,” he said.
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