The Osun State chapter of the All Progressives Congress on Sunday demanded the probe of Mr Kazeem Akinleye, the Chief of Staff to the state governor, Ademola Adeleke, over alleged involvement in contract fraud.
The APC, in a statement by its spokesperson, Mr Kola Olabisi, urged the governor to hand over Akinleye to the Code of Conduct Bureau for probe for allegedly using his office to corner a N297m Tertiary Education Trust Fund contract belonging to the University of Osun, to his company, Akinsas Interbiz Limited.
Olabisi also said the allegation against Akinleye was weighty enough to warrant a probe, urging Adeleke not to delay further.
“The governor’s explainer that Akinleye is not culpable because he is not a member of the UNIOSUN Governing Council or a member of the board of directors of TETFUND is spurious just as it is vacuous.
“Does it mean the governor himself can deploy the instrumentality of his office to curry favour or contract for his company in the state-owned institutions under a pretext that he resigned his directorship on assumption of office?
“The drafters of the law did not envisage that a public officer would resign his or her interest in a company only for such a business entity to land mouth-watering contracts in the state where the founder of the company is a key policy maker and administrator.
“While we hold that Akinkas Interbiz Limited is at liberty to bid for contracts in any public institutions in the country, despite the current status of its founder, it becomes inappropriate if such business activities include hustling for contracts in state-owned institutions in Osun, where Mr Kazeem Akinleye is the alpha and omega and the de facto governor,” Olabisi said.
Reacting to the allegations, Adeleke’s spokesperson, Olawale Rasheed, said Akinleye had effectively ceased to be a director of the company before he was appointed the COS.
Rasheed said Akinleye could not in any way be held accountable for the business operations of the said company as he never sat at any meeting or board deliberation where the contract in question was discussed
The governor’s spokesperson, who declared that the allegation against Akinleye was diversionary, insisted that it would not stop the prosecution of many former top officials of ex-governor Gboyega Oyetola’s administration over infractions in contract handling in the last government.
Rasheed’s statement further read, “The state APC is dead scared of the conclusions of the forensic investigation of the state contract review committee and the white paper implementation committee headed by Hon Kolapo Alimi which evidentially indicted many former top officials of the last government.
“The state APC is probably aware of the details of the many contract frauds, the companies used in perpetrating those fraudulent schemes and their directors are already in possession of the implementation committee which is now set to move to the stage of prosecution.”
Rasheed added that “the detailed materials available to the committee and the reality that those top officials indicted cannot escape the long arms of the law motivated the APC’s failed strategy to malign top administration officials including the Chief of Staff, Hon Kazeem Akinleye.”
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