NCC Shuts Down Buhari’s Campaign Fund Raising Platform

The Nigerian
Communications Commission, NCC, has shut down the 35350 SMS platform for
raising fund for the General Muhammed Buhari presidential campaign.
The platform was one
of the five launched in Lagos on Tuesday, but the Director,
Buhari-Osinbajo Fund Raising Campaign and Governor of Lagos State,
Babatunde Fashola told a news conference on Thursday at the State House,
Marina, Lagos, southwest Nigeria, that President Goodluck Jonathan has
become so desperate that he is using the NCC to haunt the opposition
party.
With the 35350
platform, Nigerians willing to donate to Buhari’s campaign simply had to
send APC to the 35350 to contribute N100 to the campaign either using
MTN, Glo, Etisalat, Airtel and Visaphone.


According to
Fashola, the NCC shut down the platform on Wednesday afternoon after it
wrote to the telecom operators not to carry such messages.
“The NCC has shut
down the 35350 platform for sending N100 message to the Buhari fund
raising campaign yesterday afternoon. Before it was shut down, 5400
people had contributed N100 to the Buhari campaign fund using the
platform,” he said.
Fashola added that
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.
He said in 2010, the
same platform was granted by the NCC to raise fund for the
Jonathan-Sambo campaign, while appealing to the president to direct NCC
to restore the platform as the people’s freedom was being gagged.
The governor
restated that it entered into business relationship with the telecom
operators and was never a political issue to make them partisan.
Fashola lamented
that in recent time, Jonathan had become so desperate and intolerant
that he oppressed the opposition in a bid to hold on to power at all
costs.
He said he never
expected to witness such brazen lawlessness and repression of the
people’s freedom to express themselves all in the quest to cling to
power at all costs.
“Why should a
commercial transaction be frustrated because of one man’s desire to
serve and why should they be shutting down generational platform?” he
asked.
Fashola said the
Federal Government had earlier shut down the APC’s website which made
the party to launch another platform which is still being haunted by the
presidency.
The governor said
the APC would explore all legal means to fight for its interest but
lamented that the courts had been shut down for long, thus, preventing
the party from using it to seek reddress.

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