By 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 surounding the Shonga farms project.
Commissioner for Communications, Mr. George Towoju, who made this known during an interactive session with members of the Correspondents’ Chapel of the Kwara State Council of the Nigerian Union of Journalists, NUJ, in Ilorin, said huge illegal diversion of public properties was the order of the day, lasting not less than 16 years.
The Kwara State government disclosed that the state legal team will soon sue all people found to be culpable in the illegal diversion of public properties in competent court of law.
According to the commissioner, “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 about 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 together all that is needed to negotiate on how to retrieve the properties.
He said, “The fact is that AMCON knew that Kwara State government’s shares in Shonga Farm is just 10 per cent and one wonders how a 10 per cent 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 per cent shares they claimed we have, the state never received a kobo as dividend as 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 four 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.”
The commissioner had earlier served as a member of the government White Paper committee that investigated allegations of diversion of Kwara State 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 same 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 that the state legal team is now putting everything in place to ensure that all properties illegally acquired are retrieved and returned to the government, most especially, in Abuja and Kwara; vowing that the Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq-led administration will ensure that everyone found culpable were brought to book in order to serve as deterent to those presently in public office, and those that would occupy public positions in future.
Recall that top Kwara State government officials last week addressed a press conference on radio and television network, where they alleged a large scale fraud in the Shonga Farms project, insisting that not less than N5 billion Kwara 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 as dividend to the state.
