Alwan Hassan’s comment on appointment scandal not about Tinubu’s ministers – Felix Morka

The National Publicity Secretary of the All Progressives Congress, Felix Morka, has denied allegations that ministers in President Bola Tinubu’s administration paid billions of naira to secure their appointments. Morka said the ministers were selected based on competence, insisting that no such payments took place under the current administration. He spoke on Arise News on Wednesday while responding to comments by Alwan Hassan, a spokesperson for the APC Presidential Campaign Council, who alleged that some ministers paid billions of naira to secure their positions and later sought to recover the money after assuming office.

Morka said he had spoken privately with Hassan, who clarified that his comments referred to practices predating the APC-led administration rather than the current government. “Since that interview, I have had a moment to speak with Alwan to also just, out of curiosity, understand what he was thinking when he made those comments. He explained that what he was referring to was not really about this administration, but he was speaking in a historical context,” Morka said.

“When he came back and said this thing predated the APC, that suggested to me that his frame of thought was really located not in the present, but really in the past.” He acknowledged that Hassan’s remarks were open to different interpretations, including the suggestion that officials paid for their appointments. “However, what he said left a lot of ambiguity, which some have suggested that he was speaking about appointments,” Morka said.

The APC spokesman distinguished between lobbying for political appointments and paying money to secure them, describing the latter as unacceptable. “In all democracies, lobbying for appointments is not something unusual. In the United States, there are firms that contract to lobby for individuals to get appointments to office. Those are usual things that happen in the background prior to appointments,” he said.

“But I think the concern here is when lobbying becomes monetized, where people pay money to authorities or to individuals to influence, to procure appointments. That I think is what is odious, what is really wrong.” Morka categorically rejected the allegation that ministers in Tinubu’s government paid billions of naira to obtain their positions. “I can tell you without equivocation that there’s no such thing.

It didn’t happen. Our ministers were selected on the basis of the competence,” he said. He added that Hassan had expressed regret over how his comments were framed and told him that he had intended to discuss the issue in a historical context. “What I’m saying is that the individual who made these comments, as I told you, I’ve had conversations with him, he’s clarified for me to my satisfaction that he was mud-slung in a moment of — he didn’t frame all of that.

It sounded unequivocally clear,” Morka said. Explaining their conversation, he added: “I had a discussion with him because I was curious to know, ‘did you really mean to say this?’ He said, ‘No, no. That’s not what I meant to say. I may have come up wrong. But actually, what I meant to say was to situate this problem, this thematic, in historical context.’ He said that to me.”