Date Published: 11/05/11

Re: How Saraki, Ohakim, Shekarau, Modu Sheriff stole billions

It has come to the attention of Modern Kwara Group (a socio political group of youth whose interest is all about the development of Kwara State) that there is a plot to dent the good image of the former Governor of Kwara State, Dr Bukola Saraki through a well orchestrated campaign of calumny and falsehood.

The structured campaign is using an online publication called  pointblanknews.com.

We are amazed that mere hearsay could be elevated to the level of news story by  pointblanknews.com without a shred of evidence.

Ordinarily we shouldn’t dignify such low level gossip and malicious fiction with a response, but we have decided to set the records straight for the public and for posterity, more so that the structured campaign of calumny is coming a few days after his election into the National Assembly Red Chamber was upheld by the National Assembly/State Assembly Elections Tribunal.

We want to state categorically that the allegation against Dr Bukola Saraki by the online publication ( pointblanknews.com) are completely False, baseless and malicious. It is unintelligent to allege what you cannot substantiate.

The allegation that Senator Saraki mismanaged N65billion during his tenure as Kwara State Governor shows the level of intelligence of the writer and his publisher. A little effort in investigative journalism would have saved the online publication this embarrassment.

The figure from Federal Ministry of Finance publication on state release for Federal Account and Allocation committee (FAAC) on what was accruable to Kwara State for eight years (2003-2011) was less than N144billion. In his first tenure Senator Saraki took N48billion and spent 33.6billion on salaries.

In his second tenure he took N96billion and spent N57.6billion on salaries. So if the Distinguish Senator paid salaries alone and did nothing else, there is no surplus of N65billion to be mismanaged, when out of N144billion the sum of 91.2billion was expended on salary. What is left is N52billion.

But we all know that the Senator during his tenure did a number of projects in the area of Water, Road, Rural Electrification, Healthcare, and Education across the state and this is unprecedented in the history of the State.

We are of the opinion that even if the faceless sponsor of this campaign do not have any reputation to protect,  pointblanknews.com should learn to shield its pen with a little sense of responsibility to the society it seeks to inform.

Using figure like N65billion is to paint Senator Bukola Saraki in bad light and make people who don’t know much about Kwara believe their tissues of lies.

We are copying all government anticorruption agencies so that this tissue of lies will not be used as a base for petition, in case anybody belief its credibility.

Bolaji Ibrahim

Publicity Secretary