Olusegun Agagu

Barely five weeks after the release of the sum of eight hundred million (N800 million) from the State treasury by Dr. Olusegun Agagu for the payment of severance allowances to himself and his aides, Agagu has again ordered the release of another five hundred million (N500) for the payment of car allowances to his aides in flagrance abuse of the provisions of the Revenue Mobilization and Fiscal Commission’s law, the Ondo State chapter of the Labour Party (LP) again on Sunday alleged.

LP, while expressing displeasure with the spate at which it alleged the State’s resources were being plundered by Agagu since the July 25, 2008 verdict of the Justice Garba Nabaruma led Election Petition Tribunal which nullified his (Agagu’s) election and declared Dr Olusegun Mimiko as the duly elected Governor of the State, regretted that the development was not only illegal, self serving but an abuse of office. The money, according to the LP, would be released to the aides next week.

In a release by its Director of Press, Mr. Kolawole Olabisi, LP noted that for Agagu to ordered the payment of car loans to his newly appointed aides most of whom were appointed a few months ago and coming just five weeks after he unilaterally awarded himself and all his aides severance allowances on the eve of the Tribunal’s judgment, was the height of corruption and a breach of the oath of office he swore to uphold as governor.

“It is settled law that you cannot pay car loans to public officers who have not served up to two years in office more so when you have just paid them severance allowances which they are not entitled to under the law in the first place anyway. This is clearly an aberration and a sad development in the annals of Ondo State,” LP noted in the release signed by Olabisi.

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The party promptly called on the President Umar Musa Yar’Adua, in line with his zero tolerance to graft in any form, to immediately direct the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices and related offences Commission (ICPC) to intensify its probes into the finances of the Olusegun Agagu administration in order to put a halt to the spate of looting by the governor.

 “Isn’t it an irony that Agagu, despite his vitriolic attacks on the Judiciary for retrieving Mimiko’s stolen mandate from him, should not only embark on the wasteful expenditure of a whopping N1.3billion on himself and his aides with the payment of severance allowance and now this car loans barely a year after he did a similar exercise before the April 14, 2007 election? Isn’t it also an abuse of office that Agagu who has refused to pay the severance allowances of his predecessor in office and his aides has paid himself and his aides twice in five years and also for releasing car loans to those who statutorily do not merit them yet?” Olabisi queried.

He further described the governor’s action as morally wrong, illegal and outright fraud and called on the President, Alhaji Umar Musa Yar’Adua, to immediately direct the anti-graft agencies to probe the finances of the State in line with his Administrations zero-tolerance to corruption.

LP recalled that it had recently warned of a directive by Agagu to the financial departments to conjure decision of the Financial and General Purposes Committee for the purpose of accessing funds through banks as loans or overdrafts for the payments of committee allowances, severance allowances and other imaginary allowances due to political appointees.

While attributing the rate at which Agagu has been siphoning Ondo State resources through sundry means in recent time to his recent  sack by the Tribunal, LP noted that this was Agagu’s way of depleting the treasury of the State by putting it in huge debt so that by the time a Mimiko is sworn-in, his administration would be saddled with servicing the huge debts he inherits for the next two years.

“For Dr. Agagu, it is really Harvest Time, to borrow from his oft-quoted phrase, going by the ways and manners in which he had been plundering the resources of the State in recent times, but in the fullness of time, his actions and inaction while in office shall be subjected to public scrutiny.”

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