Osun State Government and a former aide of ex Governor Gboyega Oyetola on Monday traded accusations over alleged money laundering activities and abuse of procurement laws in award of contracts
While the Governor Ademola Adeleke-led administration alleged that his predecessor abused procurement law by awarding contracts to his associate, the former Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs under Oyetola, Mr Adebayo Adeleke, BANIK, said the accusations were just a fight back from Adeleke over local government council crisis.
The Commissioner for Information and Public Enlightenment, Kolapo Alimi, who briefed newsmen disclosed that closed associate of Oyetola, including BANIK, who later became a Commissioner were given contract for construction and rehabilitation of Primary Health Centres funded with $20million under the World Bank’s Save One Million Lives initiative(SOML).
According to Alimi, the Health Intervention Committee set up by the previous administration was chaired by the former Governor and breached the procurement Act 2007 in awarding renovation and rehabilitation contracts to his cabinet members, friends and cronies.
“Unde Public Procurement Act 2007, there are laid down procedures on how contracts are awarded by any entity using at least 35% of Government Money for any project. Sections 16 (c)(d)(e)(f) and 6 deals with the procedures.
“Rather, the former Governor in observing the provision of the Act, in breach, awarded the contracts to individuals who were either his cabinet members, head of one agency of government or the other, his proxies and his political appointees, who claimed to have incorporated business names /inactive companies.
“Many of these business enterprises to which these contracts were awarded do not have building or construction as their object”.
He also alleged that the Oyetola and BANIK supervised how Association of Local Government, ALGON, in the state laundered N1.5billion without executing any project under whatsoever head during the period.
Reacting, BANIK described the allegations as an attempt to carry out vendetta, especially after the failure of the Governor Adeleke to impose his illegally elected council officials on the state.
According to BANIK, his company registered with Corporate Affairs Commission, got contract to build, renovate and rehabilitate Primary Health Centres in 2019 and five of the six contracts awarded to the company were awarded in September 2019, prior to his appointment as Commissioner on October 24, 2019 and letters of acceptance were signed by him.
“The last one awarded to it in July 2020 was received and its letter of acceptance signed by the company’s Chief Engineer, Festus Adedokun. As you can see from my letter of resignation I am holding, I resigned from my position on October 25, 2019.
“The health centres contract were executed in line with specifications and duly completed. Also, all the 332 health centres were completed, no one was abandoned and are functional today, that is value for money”, he added.
On the issue of money laundering, Chairman, ALGON under the Oyetola administration, Mr Abiodun Idowu said the state government is being mischievous as records of every transaction was domiciled in the office of the Auditor-General for local government areas in the state.
He disclosed that the association decided to engage a financial expert on temporary basis to over its joint projects and ensure value for money while managing its finances.
“And since we don’t have money to hire staff on a permanent basis, we have three recommendations out of which we engaged Akeem Ibitoye, because he’s a financial expert and a Director of Finance in Ife-East local government as at that time.
“He is to track and manage our joint projects, supervise and ensure retirement of records for any transactions. And to the glory of God, he ensured that all our transactions are recorded. For your information, our major projects also went through Local Government due process office and we had letters of clearance from the office
“Besides, all our transactions records were submitted to the Auditor-General for local government, hence, the officials report of the office concerning local government activities while we were in office.
“About Akeem running away, I don’t think that is correct, I am aware, he retired from office after completing his years of service. He sent in notice of retirement in August 2023 and the probe committee had started it job before then. If he has been found wanting, what was the committee doing while he was processing his retirement. This is pure witch-hunting.
“If this is wrong Alimi supervised the withdrawal of N3.5billion as the then Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs in 2017/18, he should tell us how it was expended”, he added.
