Mercy JohnsonThe All Progressive Congress (APC) in Oyo State has accused the State governor, Seyi Makinde of allegedly diverting the people’s palliatives worth N5.7 billion.
The palliative consist of funds and food items donated to the state by the Federal Government to ease the hard effects of fuel subsidy removal on the populace.
The distribution of palliatives by the Federal Government follows the promise of the President to employ palliative measures with the intent to ease the burden of economic hardship on the indigents in the country.
Following this intent, the Federal Government released items and funds through the state and local governments in the past few weeks with some state governments like Kwara and Ogun openly confirming the development.
In a statement by the APC Publicity Secretary, Olawale Sadare, in Ibadan, Oyo state capital, on Tuesday, the PDP administration in the state was accused of deliberately withholding necessary information relating to the receipt, distribution and general management of palliatives delivered to the Oyo State government for the people.
Sadare said “Virtually all the states of the federation have declared the receipt of, at least, two billion naira out of the five billion which the Federal Government has earmarked as funds to be paid to the poorest of the poor through the states.
Last week, neighbouring Osun and Kwara states acknowledged the payment of the sum of two billion naira to their purse but Makinde kept this away from the public knowledge in his usual character”.
Sadare stressed that for about six weeks, the people of the state were kept in the dark regarding the whereabouts of three thousand bags of rice which Makinde got from Abuja. He expressed that there were indications that these food items were diverted the same way the COVID-19 relief materials presented by the Federal Government, corporate organisations, and individual philanthropists were also diverted.
“We also put it to Makinde to explain the reason behind his order on local government council chairmen to transfer (to the state government account) the two tranches of N56m paid to their council accounts between August 16 and 18 this year by the federal government as the shares of the third tier of government.
“The 33 local government councils in the state got a total of N3.696b but they could not utilise a dime from the funds for the purpose which the money was meant to serve.
“It is evident that the orchestrated Palliative Committee set up by Gov. Makinde about four weeks ago was just to fool the public as the committee would not have anything to do in the long run.
“We won’t be surprised though if the state government released a few bags of rice and noodles to the committee in the coming days and asked them to distribute the same to a few PDP members just to create an impression that the target population of poor people in society have benefitted,” Sadare asserted
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