Ahead of the visit of President Muhammadu Buhari to Kwara State on Tuesday for the APC presidential campaign, the leading opposition and ruling parties have engaged in a war of words.
While PDP has accused APC of packaging “fraudulent and uncompleted projects”, for the president to commission during the visit, APC said the opposition was only “jittery because of its horrible record” in the state.
The director general of the PDP Campaign Council in the state, Prof. Ali Ahmad, at a press conference held in Ilorin, said the governor failed to “commission any landmark project since he assumed office.”
He said that was “despite the humongous funds that accrued to Kwara in the form of allocations, IGR, grants, loans and several other funds.
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“To save himself the embarrassment of having his failures become a topic of national discourse when the president visits and finds no noteworthy project to commission, the APC resolved to deceitfully get the president to commission uncompleted and fraudulent projects, thereby making him a party to their shameless grand conspiracy,” the campaign D-G said.
He said the governor was fishing for projects to present to President Muhammadu Buhari to inaugurate.
Prof. Ali Ahmad listed some of the “uncompleted and failed projects to include Yebumot/Al-Hikmah road, Tailors Shop aka Garment Factory, Innovation Hub, ICT Centre, International Conference Centre, and the General Tunde Idiagbon Flyover in Tanke among others.”
Reacting, the APC campaign council spokeswoman, Florence Oyeyemi, said the PDP would cry out its heart next month when Buhari arrives to inaugurate some legacy projects executed by the governor.
“President Buhari is coming next Tuesday to only flag off the presidential campaign in Kwara, while a different date will be announced for the grand commissioning of different impactful projects in the state.
“The PDP is understandably jittery because it has exhausted its arsenal of empty catchphrases and propaganda that failed to inspire the electorate as a result of its horrible records in Kwara State.
“Worse still is the fact that the PDP campaign council is led by persons notorious for their roles in diverting public resources for their own use.
“They are understandably pained that this governor is now committing savings from bogus consultancy money, that they were diverting to their private pockets, to improve the state.”
Also speaking, the Commissioner for Information, Abubakar Buhari, told Daily Trust that “If at all the state government is going to commission projects, it will be made official. Why are they preempting the process?”