Olusegun Agagu

The Ondo State chapter of the Labour Party (LP) again on Sunday raised an alarm over the release, last week, of eight million naira (N800million) from the State treasury by Dr. Olusegun Agagu for the payment of severance allowances to himself and his aides who have been working with him from May 29, 2007 to date describing the development as not only illegal, self serving but yet another in the systematic plundering of State resources by Agagu.

The Party promptly called on the Presidency to immediately direct the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices and related offences Commission (ICPC) to probe the finances of the Olusegun Agagu administration in order to put a halt to the spate of looting by the governor.

In a release issued in Akure by its Director of Press, Mr. Kolawole Olabisi, LP noted that the doling out of this whopping sum of money for political office holders as severance allowance is, contrary to his public posturing and boasts, an admission by Agagu that he did not win the April 14, 2007 governorship election as it (LP) had shown the whole world at the Election Petition Tribunal which had already sacked over twelve PDP lawmakers in the last two weeks due to the fraud perpetrated in the April elections in the State.

advertisement

“Isn’t it an irony that Agagu should embark on a fresh payment of severance allowance to himself and his aides barely a year after he did a similar exercise before the April 14, 2007 election? Isn’t it also an abuse of office that Agagu who has refused to pay the severance allowances of his predecessor in office and his aides has paid himself and his aides twice in five years?” Olabisi queried.

He further described the governor’s action as morally wrong, illegal and outright fraud and called on the President, Alhaji Umar Musa Yar’Adua to immediately direct the anti-graft agencies to probe the finances of the State in line with his Administrations zero-tolerance with corruption. LP recalled that it had recently warned of a directive by Agagu to the financial departments to conjure decision of the Financial and General Purposes Committee for the purpose of accessing funds through banks as
loans or overdrafts for the payments of committee allowances, severance allowances and other imaginary allowances due to political appointees. While attributing the rate at which Agagu has been siphoning Ondo State resources through sundry means in recent time to his imminent sack like other PDP lawmakers who had been booted out from office by the Election Petition Tribunal sitting in the petition filed by the acclaimed winner of the April 14, 2007 governorship election in Ondo State, Dr Olusegun Mimiko of LP, the party noted that this was Agagu’s way of depleting 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.

“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, but in the fullness of time, his actions and inaction while in office shall be subjected to public scrutiny.”

 

 

-------------------------------------------------------------