Olusegun Agagu

The Ondo State Chapter of the Labour Party (LP) on Sunday condemned last Thursday’s admission by the Ondo State government of the spates arrests and invitation of its officials by the anti-graft agencies, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission (ICPC) as “routine, normal and usual checks” saying by this admission, Dr Olusegun Agagu’s administration has proven to be the most corrupt regime in Nigeria.

In recent weeks, officials of the Agagu’s government had been arrested while several of them including the Finance Commissioner, Mr. Tayo Alasoadura have become usual guests of the anti-corrupt agencies on allegations bordering on alleged diversion of State funds to secret accounts, money laundry, and fraud.

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The administration while reacting through Mr. Edddy Olafeso, the State’s Information Commissioner, to last week’s arrest of the State’s arrest of the State’s Accountant General, Mrs. Folake Ogunnika by the EFCC had described the arrest and spates of invitation of its officials as routine check adding that the administration was above board.

But LP in a release signed by its Director of Press, Mr. Kolawole Olabisi noted that the admission by the regime that there was nothing unusual in the numerous invitations of its officials over alleged corrupt practices of monies running into billions of naira is quite unfortunate and shows the type of massive lootings that are being perpetrated by the Agagu government.

According to the party, whose Flag bearer, Dr Olusegun Mimiko was on July 25, this year declared as the duly elected governor of the State in the April 14, 2007 governorship election by the Justice Garba Nabaruma led Election Petitions Tribunal, Agagu’s government remains the most corrupt regime in Nigeria at present since nowhere in the nation has the two anti-graft agencies been on the trails of government officials like in Ondo State.

“For keen followers of events in Ondo State, the last five years had been characterized with massive looting of our treasury under spurious heads purportedly to fund phoney projects by the administration of Dr Olusegun Agagu. For a government that had received over N400bn in five years, except for media hypes, there is nothing on ground to show for all the funds that had accrued to the State from the Federation Account. The people go to bed hungry, the roads are in a sorry state, taps are dry, there are no job opportunities and yet, billions of naira are being spent on advertorials in the mass media portraying Ondo State as an El-Dorado.

“For a Governor who claimed to have N22bn in fixed deposits in several banks, he ordered the sale, last year, of the Oduduwa House, the Ondo State Lagos Liaison Office in Victoria Island, one of the legacies by the founding fathers of the State, for a paltry N650million to his cronies, in the same breath, he sold over, under the table, without going through the Nigerian Stock Exchange, the 1.5bn Ondo State shares in the Omega Bank Plc., and when we cried out over this unwholesome sale, he claimed he wanted to use the proceeds for ‘monumental projects’ . but up till today  the people of the State are still waiting for these so-called ‘monumental projects’ of Agagau and only three weeks ago, he got a whopping N36bn Supplementary Budget approved to him. Even a cursory look at this budget shows that it was an attempt to corner the State resources into his pocket and those of his acolytes. 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.”