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HomeNewsICPC never indicted me of diverting bailout – Aregbesola

ICPC never indicted me of diverting bailout – Aregbesola

Osun State Governor, Mr. Rauf Aregbesola, said the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission never indicted him of diverting the  N34.988 bailout fund given to the state to pay workers’ salaries by the Federal Government.

The governor said this on Sunday at the May Day rally held by the Ayuba Wabba led  faction of the Nigeria Labour Congress at the Osogbo Township Stadium.

Aregbesola described the allegation of diversion of the fund as a deliberate  attempt by the opposition with collaboration from a section of the media to  pull down his government.

He said there was no way he could have diverted the fund because the amount given to the state was not sufficient to clear the backlog of salaries and pensions.

He said, “The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission never indicted us. Other media agencies reported what the ICPC published on the 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. The anti-corruption body has written to us affirming again that the information it gave out covered only October 2015, saying that it never indicted us since there was no evidence that showed we applied the funds to any other matter outside of workers’ salaries.

“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.”

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He commended workers in the state for being patient with his administration over the economic crisis which had made salary payment irregular.

Aregbesola named some road in honour of the workers to appreciate them for supporting his administration despite the tough challenges it was facing.

The Chairman of the NLC in the state, Mr. Jacob Adekomi, lauded the governor for striving to pay salaries but appealed to him to pay the remaining 50 per cent of workers on grade level 08 and above and pensioners, who have been on half salaries since July 2015.

Adekomi pleaded with the governor to tamper justice with mercy in the case of some tertiary institutions’ workers, who were recently sacked.

He also asked the governor to view the issue of some LAUTECH Teaching Hospital who were considered to be excess to requirement with compassion.

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