AREGBESOLA HAS RAISED OSUN DEBTS TO N219.7BN, PDP ALLEGES

Governor Rauf Aregbesola

Osun State chapter of the Peoples Democractic Party (PDP) has alleged that the state debts under Governor Rauf Aregbesola has hit N219.7billion while efforts to procure more debts are allegedly being intensified.

The party also alleged that over N9.4billion loan had been sourced from a new generation bank by the state government.

But the state Commissioner for Finance, Dr. Wale Bolorunduro, has dismissed the allegations,  saying  there is no iota of truth in the story being peddled by PDP , maintaining that no state in Nigeria has such loan stock as being purported by PDP.

According to the Commissioner, last week, two national newspapers published the indebtedness of all the states in Nigeria and Osun does not feature in the first 30 positions. He then wondered how any state with such loan stock not feature in the publication.

“PDP is ashamed of the progress we have made concerning the infrastructure developments in Osun and stupidly added up contract sum to fabricate the loan of N219bn. They have no clue about prudent management of funds and project financing as most of the projects are under derivative financing and we have no obligation under them until contractors have performed and these are spread over long period.

“The story on the N9.6bn loan was first mentioned by Mr. Governor in February 2013 because we don’t have anything to hide. We are constructing roads in the 30 local governments and area offices totalling 218km and the initial project cost was N15bn  in which the local government  will use N5.6bn from their savings and banks have agreed to leverage this saving by providing balance of N9.6bn. It is a credit line that is not a loan burden until it is drawn.

“We may draw it and we may not, since we have a saving culture in which we build up savings to defray project cost,” he said.

If there is enough savings, we will not draw the line. We have already mobilised the contractors with our contribution of N5.6bn.

“Where was PDP when we handed over the mobilisation fund to commence the  project? They were licking their wounds and now suddenly woke up. We have followed all due process and the priority of such project is right and the local government’s ability of paying back is not jeopardised because of the long tenor. World financial institutions support countries and states with long tenor credit line to develop infrastructures. We should thank Ogbeni Aregbesola for having the credibility to attract soft, flexible vanilla credit lines unlike the PDP-led administration that was known for clueless and misappropriation of funds,” he said.

Source: This day