The Governor of Bauchi State, Senator Bala Mohammed has reacted to corruption allegations levelled against him by former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Yakubu Dogara.
The Herald had reported that the allegations were contained in a July 24 letter the ex-Speaker forwarded to the Chairman of the PDP Bogoro ‘C ’ Ward, Bogoro LGA to resign his membership of the party.
“Specifically, I intend to ask questions about the following: What has happened to LGA allocations since May 2019? What happened to our campaign promise to conduct LGA elections within six months of the PDP government?
“What happened to the N4.6 billion loan taken from a bank and paid directly into a private company’s account?
“Why are we segmenting salaries and why is payment of salaries of state workers outsourced to a private firm as consultants?
“Why are contracts inflated, awarded and payment of mobilisation done in violation of extant rules on procurement?” Dogara queried.
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But in a reaction through his Senior Special Assistant on Media, Mukhtar Gidado, the governor stated that his administration has strictly adhered to extant financial rules in the management of local government allocations 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),” Mohammed said.
He denied that his administration outsourced payment of salaries of civil servants in the state.
Mohammed further denied Dogara’s allegation that N4.6 billion was collected from a bank on behalf of the state and deposited in a private account.
“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,” the governor said.