Olusegun Agagu

The Governor of Ondo State Governor, Dr Olusegun Agagu has again come under criticisms from the Labour Party (LP) over the award of a 2.5-kilometre rehabilitation of Akure roads for a whopping N1.5billion describing it as another in the systematic plundering of the State’s resources.

In a release issued by the LP’s spokesman, Mr. Kolawole Olabisi on Monday, the party expressed dismay that aside from the unusually high price for which the contracts for the roads were awarded, it wondered how Agagu, a geologist, against any grain of sound reasoning, could flag-off the construction of the said roads on May 29 this year, at the height of the raining season.

LP disclosed that already, works on these contracts had been suspended till the dry season by the contractors who have moved out of sites owing to the heavy rains while harried residents of Akure whose houses and properties had been demolished by the contractors’ bulldozers are now counting their losses having not received any compensation from government.

“For Dr. Agagu, it is really Harvest Time, to borrow from his oft-quoted phrase, going by the ways and manners in which he had been plundering the resources of the State in recent times.  For a mere less than three kilometer road rehabilitation and extension which is being done not in the marshy area but on high grounds like Akure, the Ondo State capital, Agagu is spending N1.5bn. this in itself will enter the Guinness Book of World Record as the most expensive road every constructed on high grounds at the fullness of time. The simple truth why Agagu is rushing the said project was to ensure that he takes as much money as he can from the peoples purse since he is aware that his time as governor was over. Agagu had early this year disclosed that he had put in place what he termed “2008 monumental projects” which he boasted would showcase other visible achievements of his administration, we challenge Agagu to name the actual spots in which any of these so-called monumental projects had commenced eight (8) months since his 2008 budget was presented and approved aside from this expensive roads contract which has already stalled by rain.”

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According to Olabisi: “Agagu has again commenced, albeit on the pages of the newspapers and in form of paid advertorials, in the media, his now well known packs of lies to hoodwink the harried people who have since seen through this infamous antic of his as exemplified by his rejection at the poll on April 14, 2007.

“Can His Excellency tell the whole world how much he had spent out of his phantom N34bn set aside for projects this year? Can he also look the longsuffering people of Ondo State  in the face and tell them that he has released N3.2bn to Owena Dam which itself is a Federal Government project while his much vaunted transmission and distribution of potable water is still a mirage in the State? Isn’t it a known fact that water only runs on the screens of the State owned television station while the taps are dry despite over N7bn spent on water by Agagu since 2003?

 “And if we may ask, isn’t it a disservice to the people who he vowed to serve for Agagu to propose a whooping N5bn for the construction of primary school blocks which we all know is supposed to be local government councils affairs while his newly founded University of Science and Technology and the cash-strapped Adekunle Ajasin University both have a paltry N3bn allocated to them by Agagu? And how much has he released for these universities this year out of this so-called 3bn?

 “The truth is that with the raining season already here and with nothing yet on ground from his so-called N34bn monumental projects, the people of Ondo State are in for another fool’s ride from Dr. Agagu as the whole money would be “spent” as usual without anything physically to show for them except strange figures concocted on the pages of newspapers for the benefit of unsuspecting Nigerians in the Diaspora who do not know the real situation of things in the state. In simple term, Agagu is siphoning our money in anticipation of his imminent exit from office by the Election Petition Tribunal sitting on the petition filed by the acclaimed winner of the April 14, 2007 governorship election in Ondo State, Dr Olusegun Mimiko of the Labour Party and to ensure that  he depletes the treasury of the State by putting it in huge debt so that by the time a Mimiko comes in, his administration would be saddled with servicing the huge debts he inherits for the next two years.”

 

 

 

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