A couple of initiatives put up by the Buhari Campaign
Organisation and his party the All Progressive Congress (APC) in order to raise
funds for his electioneering campaign has been blocked by the Nigerian
Communication Commission (NCC).
Some hours after the APC announced its online and mobile
based fundraising platforms the NCC made moves to scupper it. One of the
initiatives by the APC was to launch an sms based fundraising system which
enables mobile
phone users to donate N100 to the Buhari campaign by texting to
a particular short code; 35350. The 35350 sms platform was shut down as the NCC
directed Telcos not to run or promote any partisan campaign.
We learnt that before this was shut down the Buhari campaign
organisation had already received donations from 5,400 people which amounted to
N540,000 (would be much less when you deduct the customary high percentages
taken by the Telecom companies).
Another initiative banned was the scratch card platform
where people could buy a Buhari scratch card in order to donate.
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.
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