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By Emmanuel Aziken
Monday, October 25, 2004
ABUJA— SENATOR Iyabode Anisulowo (PDP, Ogun West) who was slapped by Senator Isa Mohammed for allegedly misappropriating the funds of the Senate Committee on States and local governments has denied the allegations saying she took the controversial N707,000 on loan. In an interview in Abuja, Senator Anisulowo said Senator Mohammed raised the allegations against her in annoyance even as she traced her problems with Mohammed to the immediate past secretary of the Committee (names withheld). Besides, she also denied reports that she had worked with four different Committee secretaries on account of alleged personality difficulties on her part. Senator Anisulowo, chairman of the Senate Committee on States and Local governments was penultimate Thursday slapped in the entrance hall of the National Assembly complex by Senator Mohammed, the vice-chairman of the Committee on States and Local governments for allegedly misappropriating Committee funds. The Senate responding to the slapping action had last Tuesday suspended Senator Mohammed for two weeks in its avowed determination to be a “paragon of virtue to the country.”
Responding for the first time on the allegations of misappropriation of Committee funds that raised the fury, Senator Anisulowo said: “It was in annoyance that he raised that allegation, the allegation is not founded,” as she explained that the money in question was a loan she took as estacode from the Committee to enable her attend the recent Inter Parliamentary Union conference in Geneva, Switzerland. “I took the estacode to go to Geneva because the Senate had no money at that time. Go and find out from the Committee secretary if I had not returned the money.”
“There are some funds that I got from the Senate which enabled me to return that money, because that money was for our tours. I asked them to write Isa Mohammed himself to return the money he collected. He collected N550,000, thinking that I just took the money. Committee fund is to service Committee activities and that is what I have been doing. He has an office, office of the vice-chairman. I have my office of the chairman and we have a secretariat which is a common office. As my vice-chairman he is entitled to some funds to be used for his own activity. Accusing the Committee secretary of incompetence and being the brain behind the rumpus, she said: “This our secretary is the brain behind all the confusion because I had already told him that we will likely change him because of his attitude to work and his love for money.”
“Indeed that was why I borrowed the money (for estacode) from him, not from the bank. I was trying to deplete the Committee funds in his hands so that it wont be too much. Before I returned he went to the Vice-Chairman, gave him five hundred thousand, telling him lies, he told Isa Mohammed some lies. That I had taken the money and this and that and gave the remaining two hundred and something to himself,” she said. She also denied reports accusing her of changing Committee secretaries at will on account of her being a difficult person to work with as she said the removal of the last Committee secretary was a joint decision of the Committee. “It is a lie, that is a blatant lie. You can see how people degrade and defame. It was a joint decision of the Committee members to remove him, but you know my vice-chairman was not coming to meetings and so he wouldn’t have been part of that decision.”
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