The All Progressives Congress in Oyo State expressed outrage on Tuesday over the alleged misappropriation of money and food aid provided to the state by the federal government to ease the effects of hardship on the public as a result of the removal of fuel subsidies by the administration of President Bola Tinubu.
According to report, Tinubu declared that his administration would develop palliative methods to lessen the suffering of the nation’s impoverished due to hunger and economic hardship.
The state and local governments are said to have released some of these intervention cash and supplies in recent weeks, and several state governments, including Kwara and Ogun, have publicly acknowledged the occurrence.
Olawale Sadare, the publicity secretary for the APC, criticized the PDP administration in the state for willfully withholding information about the receipt, distribution, and management of money and food supplies delivered to the Oyo State government as the share of the good people of the state, in a statement released on Tuesday in the state capital of Ibadan.
In his words, “Almost all the states of the federation have acknowledged receiving at least two billion naira out of the five billion that the federal government has set aside as cash to be paid to the poorest of the poor through the states.
“Last week, the neighboring states of Osun and Kwara admitted that a sum of two billion naira had been paid into their coffers, but Makinde hid this information from the public as is customary for him.
The state’s residents have been wondering where the 3,000 bags of rice that Makinde received from Abuja are for about six weeks. There are signs that they have been diverted, just like the COVID-19 relief supplies provided by the federal government, businesses, and private donors.
“We also ask Makinde to give an explanation of the rationale behind his directive to local government council chairmen to transfer (to the state government account) the two tranches of N56 million paid to their council accounts between August 16 and August 18 of this year by the federal government as the shares of the third tier of government.
“The 33 local government councils in the state received a total of N3.696 billion, but they were unable to use even a single penny of the cash for the intended purpose.
“It is clear that the contrived Palliative group, which Governor Makinde established about four weeks ago, was only created to deceive the public because the group would not ultimately have any impact.
“We won’t be surprised though if the state government releases a few bags of rice and noodles to the committee in the coming days and asks them to distribute the same to a few PDP members just to create the impression that the target population of poor people in society have benefited,” Sadare submitted.
