The Governor of Osun State, Rauf Aregbesola may be running into trouble with the Presidency, as the Civil Society Organisations, CSOs, based in the State, have called on President Muhammadu Buhari, against entrusting funds meant for the school feeding programme to the Governor.
The development is coming at a time, when President Buhari is expected to launch the programme in Osogbo, the State capital, on Thursday, September 1, 2016.
The CSOs under the auspices of the Civil Societies Coalition for the Emancipation of Osun State, CSCEOS, in a statement signed by its Chairman, Comrade Adeniyi Alimi Sulaiman, on Tuesday, August 30, and made available to Post-Nigeria, disclosed plans to siphon money meant for the school feeding programme, by Aregbesola and his cohorts.
Comrade Sulaiman, speaking further, noted that Aregbesola had connived with the Vice-President, Yemi Osinbajo to convince President Buhari, to release funds meant for the free food project to State governments across the country.
He said, “This is where corruption has swept into the programme.
“This is where the project will become conduit pipes, through which billions of naira will be going into private purses.
“This is where Buhari’s anti-corruption crusade will be messed up”.
The group noted that, “Already, Aregbesola has falsified documents where he tremendously increased numbers of pupils in the state public schools.
“He has also forced cooks being used for his inherited O-meal programme to sign documents that the State Government was releasing N270 worth of food per child each day, instead of the N28 he was given them.
“We can imagine how much will be going off the drain into private accounts.
“For instance, if a sum of N270 is being released for one million pupils in the state, this would be N270 million.
“Whereas, the cooks will get a meagre amount from this money, and the remaining is going to be embezzled”.
While calling on Buhari to decline Aregbesola’s request, the group said, “We want to advise Mr. President to allow the FG officials to be monitoring and executing the programme, so as to avoid people of the State to be shortchanged by Aregbesola and his cronies.
“Today, Osun is the most indebted State in Nigeria, under the nose of Aregbesola.
“In our State, it is the more you look, the less we see with window dressing projects to deceive people.
“As a voice of the voiceless and down trodden masses of our people, we would not keep quiet in the face of mis-governance of Governor Aregbesola, so as not to be guilty of complicity. Likewise, we would not close our eyes, by allowing our meager resources to be siphoned by Aregbesola and his allies, under the guise of embarking on a cosmetics programme”, the group concluded.
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