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Kogi ; EFCC, ICPC Quiz Top Government Officials Over State Councils Funds Of 1.8 Billion Following a strong worded petitions by some concerned citizens of the state over the illegal withdrawals 1.8 Billion from council funds.
The anti graft agencies will without further delay, commence a thorough investigations into the accounts of Kogi state and Council funds. It was reliably gathered that 90 million naira each was withdrawn from 21 local government coffers, under a fictitious arrangement that negates the guidelines of NFIU towards the utilisation local government federal allocations.
According the petitioners, arrangement has been concluded to draw this funds illegally without due process,therefore it is demanding the immediate halt to such day light fraud of humongous amount of money, at the twilight of the present administration into the councils funds .
They also demanded among other things, invitation of the local government administrators by the two anti graft agencies to give details of their involvement in the shady deals and to also carry out a holistic investigations into funds accrued to local areas in the state in the last three and half years,it’s deployment without laid down procedures, especially the monthly payment of workers salaries and pensions at the local government levels.
The three petitioners, Ibrahim Enehezei, Onogu Oma-ane and Stephen Oluwadare argued that council workers inspite of the accruals and inflow to local government accounts have been shortchanged, under paid and in some instances, denied their monthly salaries for no reasons adduced to the decisions.
This is also in addition to non utilisation of several grants to the state in the form of bail out and Paris club granted in tranches running into billions of naira meant for payment of workers salaries and pension in the state The state government since the implementation of NFIU since June 1, had devised a subtle and underhand arrangements to borrow 3 billion naira from consortium of Banks on behalf of 21 local councils in anticipation of non access to local government accounts based on the new guidelines.
The fraudulent activities is been perpetrated by the present administration since the appointment of a Special Adviser, overseeing the local government areas, instead of the former full fledged Local Government Ministry in place, before the inception of the present administration in the state.
A lot of Petition had flooded the two anti graft agencies with no clear action in sight, but the recent one that bordered on local government funds triggered its decisions, based on the directives of the federal authorities that affected the utilisation and monitoring of council funds and it’s deployment
