Osun State Governor, Mr. Rauf Aregbesola, has
described the allegations contained in Justice
Folahanmi Oloyede’s petition against him as
deliberate falsehood fabricated to tarnish his image
and set the people against him.
Aregbesola said this in Osogbo on Saturday while
speaking at the 50th birthday of the Speaker of the
State House of Assembly, Mr. Najeem Salaam.
Although the governor stopped short of saying the
judge was used by the opposition, he said the
petitioner and those using her had failed woefully.
The governor said it was condemnable for a judge to
peddle lies, adding that one lie was enough to
rubbish the image of any judge.
He said his administration did not collect N538bn
contrary to the claim by the judge that N538bn was
the total amount the governor collected on behalf of
the state and its local government councils and not
N204bn which Aregbesola disclosed to the
lawmakers during the inauguration of the Assembly
in June.
Aregbesola said, “After examining the petition written
by the judge, I asked myself if she had any point but I
found none. It was a tissue of lies. There was no iota
of truth in it. They said Osun government collected
N538bn.
“The judge knows the code of conduct of judicial
officers. She dabbled into what she should not have
dabbled into.
“For those thinking her allegations are true: assuming
without conceding that Osun collected N10bn in a
month and we have 48 months in four years: the total
money collected in 48 months would be N480bn. That
is not even up to the N538bn she claimed but we did
not collect N10bn a month, we did not even collect
N5bn.
“That fact deflates one of the lies. If the judge was
telling lies why couldn’t journalists check how much
Osun was collecting from the records? If I collected
N538bn, Osun would have been far better than how it
is.”
He blamed former President Goodluck Jonathan for
the nation’s current economic woes. He said the
United States confirmed that one million barrels of
crude oil were stolen on a daily basis.
Aregbesola also said that he did not rule the state
from outside. He said he wasn’t travelling all over the
world, insisting that he had not gone on leave since
he became governor.
He said, “I used to travel to Cuba before I became
governor. That was where my child attended school.
But I travelled to Cuba last in 2005.”
He promised to pay salary arrears before the end of
the month.
“We will be free before the end of the month,” he
said.
He said he would ‘talk’ after he might have paid the
outstanding salaries.
Aregbesola had stopped the musician invited from
singing for him which is his usual style anytime he
was called to make his speech. He said he would not
dance because of the backlash his administration had
received because of the non-payment of salaries.
Meanwhile, the Chairman, Civil Societies Coalition for
the Emancipation of Osun State, Mr. Adeniyi
Sulaiman, has said that the group will not allow the
petition of the judge against the governor to die.
Sulaiman, who said this in a statement on Sunday,
stated that the group would ensure that relevant
agencies took necessary actions on the petition.
He urged women activists in the country to rise up in
defence of Oloyode, who he said did nothing wrong
by writing the petition but just spoke the minds of
millions of people affected by the alleged bad
governance of the governor.
The statement read, “The only solution to the
problem is for Mr. Aregbesola to answer to the
posers raised by the erudite judge in her petition and
come out with the true picture of the financial status
of the state without hiding anything.”