Osun State Governor Rauf Aregbesola said yesterday that the state has not been indicted by the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) on the disbursement of bail-out cash.
The governor, who spoke to workers at Osogbo township stadium during the Workers’ Day event, said the anti-corruption agency had written to him to clarify the matter.
According to the governor, there was no truth in the rumour that Osun was among the states indicted by the anti graft body.
He said: “I want to also assure you, contrary to the insinuation being made by our traducers, who claimed we diverted the bailout funds, that nothing of such happened. This is the concoction of a mischievous opposition and their media conspirators.
The ICPC never indicted us. Other media agencies reported the ICPC accurately that the data it published on disbursement of bailout funds by states was as at October last year and this was given to them by us. How could we then have indicted ourselves?
“I am happy that ICPC has cleared the air. We demanded for N64.3 billion to cover outstanding salaries, pension and gratuities up till June 2015 for the state workers and N23.8 billion to cover the salaries, pension and gratuities for the local government workers for the same period.
“However, we got N25.8 billion for state and N9.1 billion for local government, totaling N34.9 billion. So, we can all see that this is a far cry from what we needed and asked for. We got this far only because of exceptional financial engineering, extreme prudence and commendable cooperation of Labour. I must also let you know that there is no way we could have diverted the funds, knowing that it was not sufficient for our needs in the first place.”
Aregbesola assured the workers that the worst was over and that the state would be out of the woods soon.
He added that governors had a fruitful meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari, who has been very concerned about welfare of the states.
He praised the workers for their loyalty, dedication, hard work and their exhibition of the fear of God during the challenging period.
Chairman of the Nigerian Labour Congress in Osun State, Comrade Babatunde Jacob Adekomi, noted the commitment of the workers in the face of harsh economic conditions.
Adekomi said workers have passion for the development of the state, which explained why workers decided to troop out to celebrate the Workers’ Day.
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