Wole Adedeji, Ilorin
The Kwara State Government is set to prosecute officials of the former regimes of Dr. Bukola Saraki and Alhaji Abdulfatah Ahmed and others involved in the alleged large scam surrounding Shonga farms project.
Commissioner for Communications in the state, Mr. George Towoju, who made this known during an interactive session with members of Correspondents’ Chapel of the NUJ, in Ilorin, said huge illegal diversion of public properties was the order of the day lasing not less than sixteen years.
The state government disclosed that the state legal team would soon sue all people found to be culpable in illegal diversion of public properties in competent court of law.
The state Commissioner of disclosed this while addressing members of the Correspondents chapel of the NUJ at their secretariat, in Ilorin, yesterday.
According to him, “we are being circumspect in pressing our charges, so that we will not lose on technical ground in the court, just like how the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) lost in a case regarding our property at AbdulRasak street in GRA, Ilorin”
“Many of those properties illegally sold to themselves were purchased in companies’ names and this is one of the reasons for losing that particular case”.
Talking on the seizure of Kwara State properties by the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) because of the inability to offset loans accessed by past administrations said to be used to fund Shonga Farm, Towoju said the state legal team is already putting all that is needed to negotiate on how to retrieve the properties.
“The fact is that, AMCON knew that Kwara State government’s shares in Shonga Farm is just 10% and one wonders how a10% shareholder will be the owner. However, AMCON as a business entity deliberately held the state responsible because they know it is the only bigger body they could drag and get something from.
“Even the 10% shares they claimed we have, the state never received a kobo as dividend a shareholder since they commenced operation.
“The worst part was that out of the 13 farmlands they used as collateral to access that loans, they later went back and sold 9 farmlands only to go ahead to siphone the proceeds from the sale.
“Out of the remaining 4 left, one is occupied by a company called ‘Valentine chicken’ and another one is being occupied by a Zimbabwean who sadly is leasing it out to Kwara northerners who are the rightful owners of the land”.
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The Commissioner who served as a member of the government white paper committee that investigated allegations of diversion of Kwara Government properties at the beginning of the current administration in the State.
He said; “Some of the people that signed the papers of transfer of those government properties to private companies on behalf of the Kwara State Government are now Directors and stakeholders in the aame companies today
“They almost sold Shopping Mall, located at Fate road too, if not for the legal team of the government under the present administration that quickly went there and pasted restraining order”.
Towoju, however, said the state legal team is now putting everything in place to ensure that all properties illegally acquired are retrieved to the government, most especially in Abuja and Kwara and vowed that Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq led administration will ensure that everyone found culpable were brought to book in order to serve as deterent those presently in public office and those that would occupy public positions in future.
Recall that top Kwara government officials last week addressed a press conference that was on the radio and television network where they alleged a large scale fraud in the Shonga farm project insisting that not less than N5bn State money was spent on the project from the records and that since 2004 the money claimed to have been invested never yielded a dime dividend to the state.
