Our attention has been drawn to a threat received by our community champion in Abuja as a result of a fraud alert post shared from our Tracka page to his Facebook page, sometime last week. The post, which was initially published on our Tracka page on the 30th of May, called out Senator Aduda and The Ministry of Water Resources for allegedly mismanaging financial resources to the tune of N225m and converting a public project into a personal project, by naming the constituency project after Jummai Aduda, Senator Aduda’s mother.
The post which reads “Fraud Alert, Sen. Aduda aided by Min of Water Resources has converted a public project of N225M “mine.” The Constituency Project – gulped N100m (2016) N75m (2017) & N50m (2019) – is now JUMMAI ADUDA YOUTH CENTRE with engraved mother’s picture.” garnered several reactions from active citizens who joined BudgIT and Tracka in condemning the unacceptable and unconstitutional act.
Following this post, Sunday Dogo Zaka – a loyalist to Senator Phillip Aduda issued a threat through his Facebook page that the Abuja South PDP youth forum would “take care” of him, after which we received a distress call from our Community champion, Garba Abdullahi. He claimed that he has been receiving calls from strange and unfamiliar people who also threatened his life. Another anonymous caller advised him to visit the Senator’s former aide because they plan to “do him something bad”. As we speak, our community champion, Garba Abdullahi, has gone into hiding as a result of these threats.
As an organization, BudgIT, together with Tracka reaffirms our position that the naming of constituency projects is not left to the prerogative of the parties involved as there are laid down procedures to be followed when renaming a project. This might have community inputs but the Honourable Senator is aware that there are laid down principles in re-naming a public project, as against what was stated in the Appropriation Act.
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We also maintain that we will not share false information with members of the public to incite misunderstanding between them and their representatives at any point.
By issuing this press release, we are calling on The Inspector General of Police to investigate this issue and prevent any mishap from happening to any of our staff, community champions – Garba Abdullahi or affiliated persons.
Signed
Iyanu Fatoba
Communications Associate, BudgIT
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