Fear has gripped at least two indigenous banks which provided huge facilities to a popular downstream company in Lagos to expand its operations.
Officials of a leading indigenous bank (name withheld) which provided a ten billion naira (N10bn) loan last year to Pinnacle Oil and Gas company and a smaller bank (name also withheld) which availed the company of a three billion naira (N3 bn) facility are worried that their loans may have been diverted to finance the political ambitions of Pinnancle’s founder and chief operating officer, Barrister Peter Mba, the gubernatorial candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Enugu State.
“We are sceptical about the manner the PDP candidate has been spending money even after the February 25 national elections in which Peter Obi’s Labour Party swept the polls”, said a senior manager in one of the banks who pleaded for anonymity because he didn’t have the mandate to speak to the media.
“ We had thought that he would slow down his expenditure after the February 25 elections which the ruling PDP lost woefully to the Labour Party in the state”.
The Labour Party won seven out of the eight House of Representatives seats and one out of the two Senate seats, including that of Enugu North where Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi was well trashed as he secured a mere 46,948 votes. In contrast, his main opponent, Okey Ezea of the Labour Party, received a whopping 104,494 10 votes. The outgoing governor lost even his polling unit, polling booth and ward to the Labour Party.
The election for the Enugu East senatorial seat will now be held on March 18 following the assassination of the LP candidate, Oyibo Chukwu, a lawyer, at Amechi in Enugu South Local Government Area three days to the February 25 election. The LP candidate has now been replaced by his younger brother, Kelvin Chukwu, also a lawyer.
“There is no indication that Labour Party’s popularity is waning, which will enable the PDP or any other party to make a dent in the gubernatorial and state assembly elections next Saturday”, asserted Ikenna Onyeabor, an Enugu-based engineer.
“It would rather seem that the people will come out to vote for Labour massively in revenge against the controversial result of the national polls of February 25 which saw Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) declared the winner. The people will also vote massively for the Labour Party in protest against the PDP whose Ebeano group is accused of murdering Chief Oyibo Chukwu on February 22”.
Dr Chukwuemeka Nwobodo, an economist with Oriental Economic and Management Consulting Firm in Enugu, told journalists that the fear expressed by bankers that the PDP candidate is overspending his resources “ is in order”.
According to him, there have hardly been donations from party members, friends and associates since the national elections. Most donations now go to the LP candidate, Chief Chijioke Edeoga, and other LP candidates.
The economist expressed surprise that instead of the PDP candidate reading the “handwriting on the wall clearly, he is allowing himself to be conned by those he called professional politicians.
“He should be mitigating his losses, given the odds against him and other candidates except for the LP ones, and not behave like a pathological Father Christmas”, he declared.
“For someone who studied business administration and has been running businesses, his behaviour is rather strange”.
Political rivals in Enugu accuse Mbah of not utilising his money to run either Pinnacle Oil and Gas Company or his political campaign.
They allege he has been using what is popularly called “ego ndi Enugu”, or money belonging to the Enugu people.
After serving as the Chief of Staff and later the Commissioner for Finance from 2002 to 2007 under erstwhile Governor Chimaraoke Nnamani, Mbah was arrested by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and detained for several months in connection with the management of the state’s finances.
Dr Nwobodo counselled Mbah not to behave like some other Enugu politicians “like The Reverend Hyde Onuaguluchi who used his immense resources to fund his gubernatorial ambitions, and consequently his businesses collapsed.
“Mbah’s situation may be more precarious because he borrowed a hefty N13bn to run his Pinnacle Oil and Gas Company”. GMTNews