With less than one week to the Presidential Elections, the Buhari Campaign
Organization’s international fund raising drive, which was consolidated
during its candidate’s recent London trip, has reportedly yielded its
first bumper harvest from a shadowy group of Arab sheikhs.
The donors, led by former Saudi Arabia oil minister-turned top Middle East
politician Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani, is spurred by renewed Arab interests
in regaining leverage over OPEC and the strategic prospects of a Muslim
president of Nigeria, pointblanknews.com investigations reveal.
Recall that soon after the Chatam House event in London, Buhari went
underground and was not seen in public for about two weeks. Sources said
in between heeding his Doctors advise to take some rest; the APC
Presidential candidate spent sometimes meeting with old Arab friends and
potential donors to his campaign.
Sheik Yamani was Saudi Minister of Oil and Mineral Resources from 1962 to
1986 and OPEC minister for 25 years with a career highlight of
spearheading the 1973 oil embargo that saw OPEC quadrupling the price of
crude oil in the most daring Arab challenge of Euro-American dominance and
control of the international oil market.
Initial figures mentioned range between $500 to $700 million, according to
Western intelligence sources, the bulk of which has already been moved to
Abidjan, Cote D’Ivoire preparatory to siphoning it to agents of the Buhari
Campaign Organization said to have been “personally nominated” by General
Buhari in London for a last-minute dollar-attack to secure an edge in the
March 28 elections.
Pointblanknews.com gathered that indications of an imminent Arab-sourced
lifeline for the Buhari Campaign Organization first emerged in the last
days of General Buhari’s controversial London trip when he went off the
radar but discreetly hobnobbed with a few mainly Arab visitors. These were
later identified as emissaries of Sheikh Yamani working with his
London-based oil and gas consultancy, The Centre for Global Energy
Studies, that has been a cover for Yamani’s “diplomatic operations”.
Nigerian sources close to the Buhari Campaign Organization confirmed
“recent high expectations of foreign funding” within the caucus but also
admitted a “dilemma” over the implications of accepting financial
assistance from a distinctly Islamic source against a background of
“unresolved political challenges” arising from the widespread perception
of General Buhari as a Muslim fundamentalist which has been a major thrust
of campaigns against his candidature.
However, the sources added that the “hawks” in the Buhari campaign caucus
pushed for accessing the Arab support in a bid to bolster the financial
clout of the campaign organization to overcome the “lack lustre” backing
of the APC platform it had to merge into to acquire “geographical spread”.
This concern also explains why the contacts and negotiations for the Arab
support were exclusively managed by the closest aides of General Buhari
“literally behind the backs of the APC leadership”, the source confided.
General Buhari’s links with Sheikh Yamani stemmed from his days as a
colonel and Petroleum Minister under the military government of General
Obasanjo during which he represented Nigeria at OPEC where Yamani was
calling the shots.
Sheikh Yamani’s connections to the Islamic fundamentalist activism
surfaced when he spearheaded the 1973 OPEC oil embargo targeting Western
control of the international oil market but was also highlighted in the
events surrounding the 2002 discovery of a document that referred to the
“Golden Chain” – an elite club of twenty Saudi billionaires whom Osama bin
Laden was said to have identified as his top financiers in launching the
Al Qaeda terrorist organization.
Soon after the elections were postponed, APC allegedly ran out of funds.
Its several advertisement disappeared from the media. The party also
stopped all campaign activities.
Sources confirmed that soon as words came in that the Arab funding was
ready, the APC’s media machineries were asked to preempt it in the media
by alleging that the peoples Democratic Party, PDP, plans to accuse the
opposition party of receiving Dollars from the Arab.
The post Arab Sheiks Boost Buhari’s Campaign With $700 Million appeared first on Pointblank News .
