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‘Economic activities paralysed in Osun’

By Editor
21 August 2015   |   2:08 am
Allegations of financial misappropriation against Aregbesola WE are asking the governor to account for his stewardship in Osun at this time because he has fully run dry the spring of Osun State due to his sheer incompetence, maladministration and fiscal irresponsibility.
yinka

Odumakin

Yinka Odumakin is the National Publicity Secretary of Yoruba socio-cultural group, Afenifere and one of the ardent critics of Governor Rauf Aregbesola’s style of governance in the state. 

Allegations of financial misappropriation against Aregbesola WE are asking the governor to account for his stewardship in Osun at this time because he has fully run dry the spring of Osun State due to his sheer incompetence, maladministration and fiscal irresponsibility.

In five years in the saddle, he has brought shame to our state to the point that the land of the virtuous has become where philanthropists now have a field day dumping food for our people like refugees.

The state is in a comatose as financial activities have ground to a halt because workers are being owed eight to nine months salaries. There is no serious activity going on in government, as the morale of hungry workers can no longer support any serious activity.

There is widespread poverty all over the state as the insolvency of the government has paralysed economic activities. Workers in the employment of the state today go about ragged with sunken cheeks.

Even when there is understanding that there is a financial crisis all over the country, Osun is in a peculiar mess as the devastation wrought by Aregbesola and his army of occupation will take not less than 30 years to redress.

Aregbesola himself has raised up his hands that the situation was beyond his control and he has no clue any more.
 There is a culture of fear all over the place today.

We experienced that when we held a summit on 23rd July and Aregbesola in violation of the laws of the land and in connivance with the partisan Commissioner of Police sealed up the venue we paid for with armoured tanks even when a member of the Police Service Commission and retired Justice Olu Adekeye was to preside at the meeting.

Purchase of helicopter The purchase of helicopter by Aregbesola in a state like Osun only portrays the poverty of the mind saddled with the leadership of the state at the moment. Even before he bought the helicopter, he was using our resources to charter flights from Ibadan to Lagos.

The governor has lied to our people that he bought the helicopter for ‘security’ surveillance but I met him at the funeral of the mother of Otunba Tola Adeniyi in Ogun state some months ago and he was brought there in the helicopter.

There is no other state in the South West except Lagos where Aregbesola was schooled in profligacy that maintains a helicopter. There is little wonder that Osun is the worst in the depth of financial insolvency in Yoruba land today.

If not that Aregbesola was promoted beyond his competence, there is no reason in this world why he should have thought of acquiring helicopter at all.

Petition before EFCC Our petition is majorly asking the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) to do a forensic audit of Osun finances in the last five years because we have reasonable and convincing reasons to believe there has been a lot of monkey business in the state.

On June 2 this year, Aregbesola told the people of Osun that the receipts from the Federation Account by the state in five years were N108b.

A diligent calculation of figures from the office of the Accountant General of the Federation and the OGR however showed that it should be N317b. It was after our summit pointed this out that Aregbesola now gave a new figure of N204b including IGR.

This is scandalous.
 There is also the N11.5b Sukuk Bond, which he also lied was interest free because Islam is against usury. We however have facts to show that the loan is with compound interest and we are going to repay N25b by 2020 and deductions already starred.

He said he was going to build 23 primary schools at N450m each, two elementary schools at N160m each and two middle schools at N150m each. He has delivered only two out of the 27 and the money gone.

The whole world was aware when Aregbesola launched a computer scam called Opon imo. They fleeced the state N8.3bn but not one Opon imo is functioning.

There was a time Aregbesola started the abuse of our young people under the O’Yes
scheme and paying them N10, 000 starvation wages but he was collecting N800m imprest weekly on the scheme.

At a point he raised a memo to buy 40,000 hijabs for the 20000 youth he engaged when they were not all Muslims and females. The cost of the hijab was N25, 000 each when hijab was N300 in Osun.

The state is littered today  with all kinds of profligate projects like the Airport, road contracts and others for which several billions have been siphoned with  no work on the ground.

Even the wage bill of the state has no immunity from the scam regime. Aregbesola claims the wage bill of Osun is N3.6b but all insistence from within the system is that the wage bill of the state cannot be more than N2.2b.

We also have it on good authority that even when Osun workers are dying in agony, Aregbesola still takes N500m monthly as security votes He came prepared for the looting of the state and every step is in furtherance of that singular agenda.

In the process he has plunged our state into debt. We have just commenced the process of asking Aregbesola to vomit all he has swallowed.

Explanation in defence of Aregbesola by Osun lawmaker The argument of the Osun parliamentarians is so hollow and a non-sequiotor. Is the EFCC an unconstitutional body? It is sheer hypocrisy on the part of these characters, who will rail against corruption at the center but would want to cover their own tracks.

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