Former commissioners of Kaduna State below Nasir El-Rufai’s administration have offered extra proof to discredit the report of the state meeting investigative committee, which accused the administration of official corruption and misappropriation of public funds.
Addressing a press convention in Abuja yesterday, eight former commissioners from the El-Rufai administration rejected the meeting’s allegations.
The commissioners who addressed the media had been Jafaru Sani (Ministry of Setting and Schooling), Hafsat Baba (Ministry of Human Providers and Social Growth), Thomas Gyang (Public Works and Infrastructure, Planning and Price range Fee), Bashir Saidu (Ministry of Finance), Ibrahim Husaini (Ministry of Agriculture and Setting), Aisha Dikko (Ministry of Justice), Fausat Ibikunle (Ministry of Housing and City Growth), and Idris Nyam (Ministry of Enterprise, Innovation and Expertise).
They described the meeting’s indictment as a baseless smear marketing campaign, asserting that the report relied on exaggerated and fabricated figures to color a false image of corruption and mismanagement.
“The avalanche of figures appears solely to have mesmerised the legislators who cite one quantity right here, after which one thing totally different on precisely the identical determine,” the commissioners instructed journalists on the press convention.
The ex-cabinet members accused the lawmakers of fabricating figures associated to the receipt and administration of state funds to intentionally malign their characters. In response to them, the auditor-general licensed the state’s audited accounts from 2015-2022 and submitted them to the State Home of Meeting, together with unaudited accounts as much as Could 29, 2023.
In response to them, the entire funds receipts to the Nasir El-Rufai administration from Could 2015 to Could 2023 amounted to N1.2 trillion. Whole expenditure for a similar interval was N1.32 trillion, leading to a funds deficit of N16.95 billion over the eight years. N838.961 billion was spent on capital tasks, whereas public debt costs amounted to N7.81 billion in the course of the administration.
They faulted the meeting members, which put the entire monetary inflows to the state and native authorities areas at N1.236 trillion. “If the committee’s whole of inflows above are appropriate, it means solely N266bn was obtainable to the State Authorities for all capital tasks over eight years,” the commissioners mentioned on the press convention.
“If the meeting committee’s whole inflows are appropriate, solely N266 billion was obtainable to the state authorities for all capital tasks over eight years.” They argued that the event in Kaduna metropolis alone exceeds N266 billion, including if that had been the case, they might have queried how and the place the investigative committee had give you the allegation of N423 billion. “This allegation, on Web page 169, is falsehood in assist of legislative defamation,” they said.
Sani claimed the funds deficits over the eight years of the El-Rufai administration had been financed utilizing overseas and home loans and grants-in-aid.
He mentioned the report begs the query as to the place the ad-hoc committee obtained its figures for income, loans, and different findings separate from the printed accounts of the Kaduna State Authorities that had been tabled earlier than the Home of Meeting on the time.
“We’ve as soon as once more drawn consideration to the obtrusive proof of the hatchet job that passes for the Report and the Advert-hoc Committee. It oozes malice and patent unfairness and raises the query why a Home of Meeting that organized intensive media protection of its adoption of the Report has refused to supply licensed true copies of the identical Report greater than a month after. It can’t be an inexpensive assumption on their half that we’ll meekly settle for this breach of basic rights or cower within the face of this deliberate assault on our reputations,” all of them mentioned in a signed doc offered to the media yesterday.
