PDP accuses Aregbesola of using bailout fund for interest accumulation

The Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP), Osun State chapter has accused the state governor, Mr Rauf Aregbesola of keeping the bailout fund released to the state in another bank for another 2 months to accumulate interests.

Aregbesola

The Director of Media and Strategy for Osun PDP, Prince Diran Odeyemi in a statement in Osogbo on Monday said  the governor wants to make huge gain from the interest rate that the money will yield during the 2 months period it will be lodged in the bank

PDP said "we have been authoritatively informed that the package that is generally referred to as bailout meant to pay backlog of workers' salary has been given to Osun State government”.

“But Mr. Aregbesola, in his usual 'I don't care nature', instead of commencing payments of workers’ salary arrears, lodged the N35 billion given to the state. According to our findings, the bank that agreed to give Mr. Aregbesola the biggest interest running into several millions of naira was given the money to fix it".

"The governor is buying time, for over 2 weeks now, he had been hiding behind staff screening to fish out ghost workers and the exercise is designed to last for another 8 weeks".

The party said the governor has dashed the hope of the workers who were already rejoicing over the release of the bailout and begged Pastors and Imams in the state to keep praying for sanity in the state.

Reacting to the allegation by the PDP, Aregbesola’s spokesperson, Mr Semiu Okanlawo said the claim by the party was baseless and urged PDP to provide proof to substantiate its claim.

Okanlawon said “Of course, it is very apparent that the only motive behind this ill-conceived statement by PDP is to again ignite hatred against Osun state government, capitalising on the on-going staff verification exercise”.

“PDP has however failed to scrutinise its own conspiratorial statement further. Otherwise, it would have reasoned that right-thinking individuals would demand for proofs of any lodgement that shows any ulterior motive as being alleged.

Besides, the verification exercise which the party claims is the subterfuge for this alleged lodgement in a fixed deposit account for personal gains is being handled with active involvement of civil servants. Does the PDP expect the workers themselves to delay the verification for its imagined interests on the funds to materialise?”