Olusegun Agagu

For causing the passage of the second supplementary budget by the State House of assembly this year without anything to show for it, the Ondo State chapter of the Labour Party (LP) has called upon Nigerians to prevail on Dr Olusegun Agagu to stop wasting the State's resources.

LP which spoke against the backdrop of the N36bn supplementary budget approved for him by the State house of Assembly last week noted that the whole essence of the budget was not to carry out any developmental projects but to line his private pockets thereby putting the State in financial straight for its Flag bearer, Dr Olusegun Mimiko, who was recently declared as the winner of the April 14, 2007 governorship election by the Justice Garba Nabaruma led Election petitions Tribunal.

In a release issued in Akure by its Chairman, Dr Olaiya Oni, a former Education Minister, the Party regretted that despite the N82.3bn that was approved for the 2008 budget last year, Agagu by February this year demanded and got a whopping N67bn as Supplementary budget for 2007 adding that in 2007, he sought and got N11.5 bn as Supplementary budget for 2006.

His words: Up till date, aside from paid advertorials and sponsored write ups and documentaries in the media, there are no capital projects to show for all these billions of naira he claimed to have spent on his phantom projects only known to him, and now, Agagu, in this transition period when a competent court of law has declared his occupancy of the Government House as illegal, has come up with this N36bn Supplementary budget when we still have four clear months to go in the year and when he has not fully expended the 2008 budget. The obvious reason why he is doing this is to use this money to cover his monumental and massive withdrawal of government funds into his political and family machinery."

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The LP chairman, who was also a former Secretary to Government and Head of Service in the old Ondo State buttressed his point by pointing to the obvious lies contained on page 29 of the Supplementary budget in which Agagu having claimed to have spent N4.2bn on certain road projects which to anybody in Ondo State had not been worked on in the last two years instead of the N3.5bn initially approved for them in the 2008 budget "only for him now to be asking for another whopping N8bn to carry out further rehabilitation of these same roads which were never rehabilitated in the first place! This is the height of profligacy and unacceptable.

To him, "it is obvious that what Agagu is targeting is the sum of N31.3bn being expected as windfall to the State from Excess crude oil fund (N17.1bn), Mineral Derivation fund (N2bn) , Special power intervention fund ( N8.5bn), Statutory allocation (N1bn), Value Added tax (N1.1bn) among others so that by the time Dr Mimiko is sworn in as the Governor of Ondo State, his government would be incapacitated by financial constraints as Agagu."

He, therefore, enjoined Mr. President and all other people of goodwill in the country to prevail on Agagu to stop this systematic plundering of the State resources under sundry guises.

"In Ondo State, the quantum of money that Agagu has collected in the last five years is not commensurate with the capital projects on ground. What the harried people are daily inundated with are orchestrated media blights of phantom projects purportedly done for the State while the reality on ground states otherwise.

"This was the reason why he lost the April 14, 2007 election as the longsuffering people of the State who had seen through his deceit and his profligacy voted him out and gave their mandate to Dr Mimiko before Agagu stole it through the barrel of gun. The tribunal in its wisdom retrieved this mandate from him and gave it to its rightful owner, Olusegun Mimiko. Agagu demurred and appealed. Rather than waiting for the outcome of the appeal, he has continued to commit the State to multi-billion naira projects at a breakneck speed all in his bid to line his pockets and cover the tracks of his monumental fleecing of the people's commonwealth, Olaiya Stated.