Bauchi State Governor Bala Mohammed has responded to corruption allegations levelled against him by the former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara.
Dogara had in a letter of resignation, addressed to Bogoro ‘C’ Ward chairman of the PDP, Bauchi, raised questions on the utilisation of local government funds, campaign pledges and N4.6bn loan allegedly taken from a bank and paid directly into a private company’s account.
The governor through a statement by his Senior Special Assistant on Media, Mukhtar Gidado, said from the inception of his administration, the state has judiciously adhered to the extant financial rules, in the management of allocations of the local governments, based on federal allocation and cash flow.
“Since June 2019, we have faithfully released the LG allocations as at when due. To the best of our knowledge, no one has complained of any violation of the provisions of either the Revenue and Mobilisation Act or the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU),” he said.
He said the allegation of outsourcing of salaries was a figment of the imagination of Dogara.
“Thus, the correct position is that the state government engaged the services of a consultant to harmonise the payrolls into one with the goal of eliminating ghost workers and put an end to the collection of multiple salaries by some fraudulent civil servants. If this is what Hon. Dogara refers to as outsourcing payment of staff salaries, we have no apologies to offer.
“ We wish to state categorically that there was no N4.6 billion loan. Perhaps, Hon. Dogara is privy to something else that we are not aware of. Be that as it may, the state government only adopted the well-known contract financing approach to handle an immediate need without piling too much pressure on our cash flow. The practice, however, is that the bank, granting the loan, decides the mode of disbursement, to ensure that goods and services are delivered,” he said.
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