Layi Olanrewaju, Ilorin
The governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Kwara State, AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, has accused Governor Fatah Ahmed of running “the most deceitful and unaccountable government in the country.”
He also described its N70 billion rice project with one Vasolar Consortium as a grand fraud.
The media aide to the governorship candidate’s campaign organisation, Rafiu Ajakaye, made the allegation in a statement, yesterday.
The statement read: ‘’Kwara State government runs the most deceitful and unaccountable government in Nigeria, as most of its claims are based on outright falsehood, while its projects are often conceived to either give the impression that it is doing something or divert public funds to advance private business interests.
“A few examples include the Shonga farm project, aviation school, diagnostic centre and, recently, the so-called International Vocation Centre, all of which the government now says belong to private concerns, after public funds had been used to establish them.
“In 2012, governor Abdulfatah Ahmed entered into an agreement with one Vasolar Consortium, which, to quote the governor, ‘will provide a total capital of N70 billion over a period of four years, while the state government is expected to provide €7 million and 20,000 hectares of land, of which 5,000 hectares would be cultivated yearly.”
He said Ahmed, while signing the MoU at the Government House, Ilorin, recently, described the project as another giant step of his administration towards effective governance.
“It has been seven long years since that MoU was signed and nothing has been heard of this clearly fraudulent rice project. Where is the public fund sunk into the Vasolar fraud? To further appreciate our O To Ge (enough is enough) campaign, Kwarans may recall that the collaboration between Kebbi State government and Lagos on rice production started on March 23, 2016, and the first yield of that collaboration was in the market by the Yuletide of the same year, precisely December 21, 2016. The Igbemo rice in Ekiti started much after the Kwara contraption and the rice is now in market.”
In a swift reaction, the state government debunked APC’s allegations.
Senior Special Assistant to the state governor, Dr. Muideen Akorede, said there is nothing secret about the Vasolar project and nothing qualifies it as a scam.
“For the benefit of the Abdulrahaman Abdulrazak campaign Organisation, an MoU is a non-legally binding, but formal agreement between two parties. That means it is not binding on tier party’’.