Oyo LGs poll: Outrage over alleged looting of council treasuries

In their desperate bid to emerge standard bearers of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in the coming elections, some Local Governments’ caretaker chairmen in Oyo State are allegedly colluding with top career officials to misappropriate funds in the councils’ treasuries.
APC leaders in the state had, contrary to the intention of Governor Abiola Ajimobi, insisted that there must be primary elections to determine party’s candidates
for chairmanship and councillorship positions, ahead of local government poll officially scheduled for February last year.
The governor and councils’ caretaker chairmen were said to be in support of selection of candidates among the aspirants for the election rather than conducting primaries.
According to competent sources, the decision of the governor and council bosses would pave the way for anointed candidates, while contestants who lost would be compensated with other political appointments.
Consequent upon the resolution of party’s leaderships, the caretaker chairmen, sources hinted, became jittery and restless, and have been holding secret meetings with top career officials of the councils,
soliciting for support and cooperation on how to mop up available funds, including the internally generated revenues for their victories at the primary elections.
Findings showed that while some top career officials felt
uncomfortable with the idea, others welcomed the move and immediately
evolved a two-way action plan to actualise their bosses’ political and
personal desire.
Under Plan A, sources confided that white elephant projects are to be collated for direct labour executions, while unneeded
materials will also be requested for supply.
For Plan B, sources further informed that immediately the caretaker chairmen emerge victorious at the primaries, commercial banks where councils’ have accounts will be contacted for “moderate” loans to be
expended on “essential services”.
“ Part of these loans running into some millions of naira, if successfully obtained, will be misappropriated on campaign rallies of
these caretaker chairmen, in preparation for council poll next year.
In readiness for the primary elections, the caretaker chairmen were said to have been financially mobilized, as rains of naira were being splashed on every delegate through house to house campaign for support.
The source said: “The primary elections, I must tell you, will be keenly contested as
more party members are still collecting expression of interests forms
in Ibadan, the state capital. No fewer than six members are slugging
it out with the caretaker chairmen per local government while that of the councillorships keep soaring. For your information, both the primaries and council poll do not exclude newly created local governments.  So, you can see that this time around it would neither be business as usual. Every contestant must prove his or her mettle on the field”.
Meanwhile, members of the caretaker committees were said to be up in arms against their chairmen in most  of the local governments over what they referred to as “betrayal of trust, lack of prudent and open-door administration”.
FREEDOM ONLINE reliably gathered that caretaker members, in one of the
local governments in Oyo federal constituency, recently engaged their chairman in a shouting match for some hours, inside his office, accusing him of “running the council like a private establishment”.
The caretaker chairman was accused by committee
members of conniving with some top career official, without their knowledge, to award direct labour road projects for the purpose of amassing ill-gotten money.
They also alleged that the chairman was not upright and sincere in working with them and in the running of council’s affairs.
One of them said: “At every finance and general purpose meeting, we [caretaker members] were usually presented with papers of expenditures without any clarity
of purpose when issues are raised. We keep demanding for breakdown and details of these questionable expenditures, but rather than to open up, the chairman will just paraphrase and urged members to endorse. To
endorse what we are in the dark about? Never. What is more worrisome is that there is nothing practically on ground to show for these whooping expenditures”.