| Drag me to ICPC •
Akande dares Oyinlola
By FEMI BABAFEMI
Wednesday, July 14, 2004
The crisis raging between former Osun State governor, Chief
Bisi Akande and his successor, Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola
took a new twist Tuesday when Akande challenged Oyinlola to
take him before the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission
(ICPC) if he has a genuine allegation against him.
Prince Oyinlola had accused Chief Akande of defrauding the
state up to the tune of N126 million allegedly hidden in the
N900 million cost of building the State Secretariat Complex
called Bola Ige House.
In a fresh letter to the Osun State governor Tuesday, Chief
Akande accused his successor of attempting to tarnish his
image.
"May I say, with a deep sense of responsibility, that
it is an insult to the sensibility of Obasanjo’s policy
and the authority of the National Assembly, who created the
Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC), for you to
publicly insist that a matter of this nature will be handled
by one of your magistrates, an employee of your government
and a public servant who you can compel to do your bidding,"
Akande stated.
He challenged the governor to declare how much he has spent
to upgrade the facilities in Bola Ige House so that Nigerians
can determine who has stolen public funds.
His words: "Whereas you have renovated your ‘new’
Governor’s Lodge with a sum of about N800 million, the
Bola Ige House, on which you are now crying wolf where there
is none, was built at a cost of less than N900 million. I
note with a sense of real sadness that the ‘new’
Governor’s Lodge, on which you have spent such a huge
amount, had already been roofed and plastered by a previous
administration."
Chief Akande also accused the governor of trying to deride
Yoruba leaders of Awolowo’s school of thought by referring
to him as a "failed Awoist."
"Is it not amusing that in the process of trying to justify
your mischief, you engaged in a session of CURSES (Egun) on
your own self to convince Nigerians that you were not telling
lies. I am not surprised that you need to make strenuous efforts
to convince Nigerians that you are not telling lies but I
do not need to indulge in such a puerile exercise because
truthfulness has been known to be the strength of my character.
"I am enjoying the ongoing argument about what you called
fraud. At the end of the argument, between you and me, it
should be clear to the public who is a liar. It should also
become clear that your motive is not to recover money from
the state but to bring odium on me by your whims and the caprice
of your collaborators," the AD chairman stated.
Chief Akande recalled that while in office, he took an average
of 100 decisions per day stressing that they all turned out
in the best interest of the people of Osun State.
"The results of those decisions produced the magnitude
of infrastructural development that symbolises Awoism in my
administration which will stand the test of time. If by your
judgmental scripting, you consider the execution of one of
those decisions to have resulted in losses, does it not occur
to you that it is an extremist posture to ask me to make refunds?
The appropriate tag for that posture is governance by path
of least assistance. It is lacking in common sense and good
conscience," Chief Akande argued. |
