By; NIYI OGUNGBOLA, Abeokuta.
The Ogun State Government has refuted the claim by the National Union of Local Government Employees (NULGE) in the state that the bailout fund received from the Federal Government by the State had been diverted.
Secretary to the State Government, Barr. Taiwo Adeoluwa affirmed this in Abeokuta at separate meetings with Heads of Local Government Administration (HOLGA) and Leadership of State Chapter of NULGE, asserting that the money was judiciously used to pay arrears of workers’ salaries and cooperative deductions, among others.
Adeoluwa who expressed displeasure at the insinuations in some quarters that part of the funds, especially the dues to Local Government councils was diverted, blamed the development on communication gap between Government and the Local Government administrators.
He added that anti-graft agencies, particularly the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC) monitored the disbursement across the country and gave the State a clean bill of health after the exercise.
According to him “What was due to Local Government councils from the total package was N9.1 billion from which we promptly cleared arrears of salaries, cooperative deductions of primary school teachers and local government staff.
“We are clear in our minds that not a dime from the money was used for anything else other than Local Government administration. We used bailout funds wholly to discharge the obligations we got if for”, the SSG said.
He noted that the meeting was at the instance of the State Governor, Senator Ibikunle Amosun and challenged local government authorities to leverage on their individual strengths to boost their Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) rather than absolute dependence on federal allocation.
Speakers at the meetings, including the State President of NULGE, Comrade Ayuba Olatunji commended the government for the initiative and submitted that such interface was long overdue.
He observed that it was necessary to use such meeting to resolve a lot of issues before degenerating into needless controversies.
