Osun
State Governor, Mr. Rauf Aregbesola, has described the allegations contained in
Justice Folahanmi Oloyede’s petition against him as deliberate falsehood
fabricated to tarnish his image and set the people against him.
Aregbesola
said this in Osogbo on Saturday while speaking at the 50th birthday of the
Speaker of the State House of Assembly, Mr. Najeem Salaam.
Although
the governor stopped short of saying the judge was used by the opposition, he
said the petitioner and those using her had failed woefully.
The
governor said it was condemnable for a judge to peddle lies, adding that one
lie was enough to rubbish the image of any judge.
He
said his administration did not collect N538bn contrary to the claim by the
judge that N538bn was the total amount the governor collected on behalf of the
state and its local government councils and not N204bn which Aregbesola
disclosed to the lawmakers during the inauguration of the Assembly in June.
Aregbesola
said, “After examining the petition written by the judge, I asked myself if she
had any point but I found none. It was a tissue of lies. There was no iota of
truth in it. They said Osun government collected N538bn.
“The
judge knows the code of conduct of judicial officers. She dabbled into what she
should not have dabbled into.
“For
those thinking her allegations are true: assuming without conceding that Osun
collected N10bn in a month and we have 48 months in four years: the total money
collected in 48 months would be N480bn. That is not even up to the N538bn she
claimed but we did not collect N10bn a month, we did not even collect N5bn.
“That
fact deflates one of the lies. If the judge was telling lies why couldn’t
journalists check how much Osun was collecting from the records? If I collected
N538bn, Osun would have been far better than how it is.”
He
blamed former President Goodluck Jonathan for the nation’s current economic
woes. He said the United States confirmed that one million barrels of crude oil
were stolen on a daily basis.
Aregbesola
also said that he did not rule the state from outside. He said he wasn’t
travelling all over the world, insisting that he had not gone on leave since he
became governor.
He
said, “I used to travel to Cuba before I became governor. That was where my
child attended school. But I travelled to Cuba last in 2005.”
He
promised to pay salary arrears before the end of the month.
“We
will be free before the end of the month,” he said.
He
said he would ‘talk’ after he might have paid the outstanding salaries.
Aregbesola
had stopped the musician invited from singing for him which is his usual style
anytime he was called to make his speech. He said he would not dance because of
the backlash his administration had received because of the non-payment of
salaries.
Meanwhile,
the Chairman, Civil Societies Coalition for the Emancipation of Osun State, Mr.
Adeniyi Sulaiman, has said that the group will not allow the petition of the
judge against the governor to die.
Sulaiman,
who said this in a statement on Sunday, stated that the group would ensure that
relevant agencies took necessary actions on the petition.
He
urged women activists in the country to rise up in defence of Oloyode, who he
said did nothing wrong by writing the petition but just spoke the minds of
millions of people affected by the alleged bad governance of the governor.
The
statement read, “The only solution to the problem is for Mr. Aregbesola to
answer to the posers raised by the erudite judge in her petition and come out
with the true picture of the financial status of the state without hiding
anything.”
Source:punchng
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