The Kwara state government legal team will soon sue all people found to be culpable in illegal diversion of public properties in competent courts of law.
The state Commissioner for Communications, Hon. Olabode George Towoju, disclosed at an interface with members of the Correspondents chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists.He said the state government was working assiduously sifting through all documents to ensure that good cases on the issues are presented before courts of law. “We are being circumspect in pressing our charges so that we will not lose on technical grounds 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 were purchased in companies’ names and this is one of the reasons for losing that particular case”, the Commissioner said.Towoju said the state legal team is currently negotiating on how to retrieve the properties seized of Kwara state properties by the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) over inability to offset loans accessed by past administrations in the name of funding Shonga Farm.
“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”, the commissioner asserted.
Towoju said further that “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”