Olisa Metuh: Court Agog As PDP Public Relations Firm Speaks

A public relations (PR) company named CMC Connect Limited, has revealed details of jobs it did for the  Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). The CMC revealed intricate details of their dealing while speaking at the trial of the embattled PDP spokesman, Chief Olisa Metuh, on Thursday, January 28.

A fifth prosecution witness (PW5), Yomi Ogunsanya told the court that his company was employed to manage the image of the now opposition party.

Ogunsanya, the managing director of CMC Connect Limited said his company represents one of the biggest PR company in the world, Burson Marsteller.

Ogunsanya said: “My company had done some work for the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) through Okwesilieze Nwodo.”

He said: “The work we did which started in 2010 ended abruptly when chief Nwodo resigned as chairman.”

According to Ogunsanya, his company as at the time had some outstanding payment with the PDP.

“So when chief Metuh became the national publicity secretary, we met with him and he said he would like to work with me then. But unfortunately the party did not have the money to pay us to continue with the work,” he said.

He however,  said that Metuh promised to compensate his company whenever a job comes up.

The CMC director further informed that the PW5 and Metuh once met at a religious event where the PDP spokesperson kept on promising that he will keep to his promise.

Metuh later called Ogunsanya sometime in 2014 to come to Abuja for a meeting.

The duo met at Metuh residence in Abuja, and thereafter, he (Metuh) drove them to the presidential villa for a meeting already in progress with former president, Goodluck Jonathan, his vice, Namadi Sambo, and the then chairman of the PDP, Adamu Muaza and former senate president, David Mark.

PW5 added that he remember seeing the then presidential spokespersons, Doyin Okupe, Ruben Abati and Professor Ifeanyi Akali at the meeting. “There were a lot more others but I couldn’t recognise all of them,” he said.

Adding that: “Even though the meeting was already in progress, I was able to pick that it had to do with plans of how to win the 2015 general elections.

“During the course of that meeting, Chief Metuh then introduced mr as a communications consultant that had worked for the party before, he then asked me to speak.

“I proceeded to speak with what I considered very frankly with the president.

“Without going into all the details of the discussion, I felt it was very important to point out to him the critical things he had to do to get the nation right.”

Ogunsanya said the president asked him a couple of questions which he remembered telling him that there was a disconnect between his government and the people.

He said the president who seemed to take everything in good fate asked them to go.

“The next evening, chief Metuh called me and said, you seem to have made an impression on the president but he has asked him (Metuh) to coordinate the initial plan for the presidential and general election for the PDP,”

Ogunsanya said his firm immediately set about the job at hand, meeting up Metuh severally on ideas and ways to reposition the party and the ideas of Nigeria.

“Throughout November, 2014, we were unable to do anything meaningful because according to chief Metuh, the funds were unavailable to prosecute what we planned.”

He said he remembered Metuh telling him that contrary to what most people felt, the party was not awash with money.

Metuh also shared some of the constraints he had in carrying out the job.

However, Ogunsanya said on December 1, 2014, a first payment of N7.5 million cheque was issued in his name(Yomi Ogunsanya), a cheque from Destra Investments Limited.

He said he (Ogunsanya) later transferred the money into the account of CMC Connect Limited.

Work started in earnest for Ogunsanya’s company in December 13, and on December 15, 2014 another transfer of N70 million was made from Destra Investments Limited account into the account of CMC Connect.

PW5 noted that their first job was appreciating the military regarding their role in the fight against the terrorist group, Boko Haram operating in the northeastern part of Nigeria.

This, Ogunsanya said was done all through the armed forces remembrance day with placements in newspapers like Leadership, Thisday, Guardian, Punch, Vanguard, Daily Trust and the Sun.

“Thereafter, this was yielding to the Christmas season, so we had campaigns on TV stations wishing Nigerians a merry Christmas and a happy new year on Channels, AIT, Silverbird television and NTA,” he said.

He said the reason for this he said was that there was a lot of demand for airtime from the various political parties.

“So to get the prime time, we needed to go through people who are media persons to secure the spots we wanted,” Ogunsanya continued.

He said this was aimed at drawing the attention of Nigerians to some of the achievement of the party.

“When we started, the former president as just being confirmed as the party’s candidate through the party convention.”

He said his company did a double spread in the newspapers of the president thanking Nigerians and promising not fail the citizens.

All this Ogunsanya said adds up to some of the activities rolled out for the party by his company during the last campaign period.

As at the time of filing this report Metuh’s trial is still on going with the judge, Okon Abang preparing his ruling for a document tendered by the prosecuting counsel, Sylvester Tahir in line with the examination of PW5.

Source: Naij.com