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Kwara State government has disclosed that the state legal team will soon sue all people found to be culpable in illegal diversion of public properties in competent court of law.
The state commissioner of Communications, Hon. George Olabode Towoju, 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 seizure of Kwara state properties by the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) over inability to offset loans accessed by tpast administrations in the name of funding Shonga Farm, Towoju said the state legal team is currently negotiating on how to retrieve the properties.
“The fact is that, AMCON knew that Kwara state government shares in Shonga Farm is just 10% and how can 10% shareholder be the owner? But AMCON, as a business people deliberately held the state responsible because they know that it is the only bigger body they can drag and get something from. Even the 10% shares they claimed we have, the state never received a kobo as dividend since they commenced operation.
“The worst part was that out of the 13 lands they used as collateral to access that loans, they later went back and sold 9 again and siphoned the money. Out of the remaining 4 left, one is occupied by a company called ‘Valentine chicken’ and another one is being occupied by a Zimbabwean and he is leasing it out to Kwara northerners that are rightful owners of the land”.
Towoju, a member of the white paper committee that investigated the allegations at the beginning of this administration, 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 those 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”.
He, however, said that the state legal team is putting everything in place to ensure that all properties illegally acquired are retrieved to the government, most especially in Abuja and Kwara, while he vowed that Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq led administration will ensure that everyone found culpable were brought to book in order to serve as lesson for those presently in public office and those that would occupy public positions in future.
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