The Arewa Round Table Against Corrupt Practices (ARTACP), has called on individuals, organisations and groups to stop making frivolous, malignant and baseless false accusations against the Managing Director /CEO of North-East Development Commission (NEDC), Mohammed Goni Alkali.
The group opined that all the allegations against Mohammed Goni Alkali are concoction of lies, envy and mischief aimed at tarnishing his positive reputation and image.
Addressing a Press Conference at Chartwell Hotel Bauchi, on Friday, Chairman and Secretary of the group; Hon. Lawal Abdullahi and Hon. Shaaban Ibrahim respectively, said, “this falsehood allegations against the Managing Director of NEDC as being perpetrated is an indication of a ploy to misinform the public in a bid to distract the Board or to cause confusion due to envy and mischief.
“The story alleges that Alkali’s son is a major contractor in NEDC , he gave approval and withdrew N5 billion to purchase military vehicles without consultations with Board members and allegations of award of fictitious contracts among others.
“All these mischievous allegations and blatant lies was nothing that can be farther from the truth. Even though we don’t want to join issues with anybody, we are, therefore, constrained to respond to the false story about an imaginary allegation of corruption against Alkali,”the Group stated.
Continuing, it said, “We urge members of the public to disregard the story which is obviously a mischievous concoction of lies designed to sow seeds of discord among members of the Board who are united in their resolve to make a difference in the North Eastern State”.
The group described the naysayers as enemies of North East making false allegations to distract Alkali from consolidating on the good works he has started by repositioning the region through execution of physical and non-physical laudable projects and different interventions to bring succour to the people of the region.
They said that the unwarranted attack on Alkali and the false threat by the faceless group was mischievous and based on hatred, malice, envy and ignorance, and the people behind the statement were feigning ignorance on how the commission operate in order to sway unsuspecting public to their ploy to cause a crisis.
“First of all, we wish to appreciate President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Vice President Kashim.Shettima for the reappointment of the board which was long in coming. We are indeed proud of Alkali; he has a humble political pedigree, sagacity, and versatility in all fields of human endeavour,” the group stressed.
“We outrightly condemn the sponsors of the false and imaginary write up, we are sad that these self-centered faceless group did not see anything good in the physical hundreds of developmental projects being executed by Alkali Goni led management.”
It stated that the projects are spread across the 112 local government areas of the Six states in the region, saying that the faceless group chose to malign and cast aspersions on the managing director.
“Consequently, we urge relevant respected citizens to ignore all forms of unholy antagonism against Alkali, we call on the security agencies to unravel this faceless group trying to sow a seed of discord in the country and to bring them to justice.
“No son of Alkali is a contractor In NEDC or anywhere in Nigeria and there are no fictitious or abandoned projects awarded by the NEDC in the subregion,” the statement added.
While reacting to the allegations published by some media outlets insinuating that there are funds misappropriations in NEDC, the Chairman of the group said that the allegations are nothing but mischief paddling and falsehood.
According to him, “after a thorough investigations by our group and we investigated and visited all the areas mentioned by the petitioners on fact findings mission, our findings revealed that no Son of Alkali is a contractor in NEDC and Alkali has no Houses in Abuja or Kaduna as alleged by the writers.”
He stressed that the NEDC like all government agencies has a limit on the amount of money the management can approve for projects, explaining that where money for a project reaches N5 billion, only the Federal Executive Council can approve such, not Alkali.
“All the projects awarded by the Commission either have reached 60 to 80 percent of completion or the contractors are making final arrangements to commence the project.
“It seems the petitioners don’t know the projects that they are talking about or they don’t know that the Commission was created by law and there are laws guiding their operations including procurement laws which from findings, Alkali followed strictly.”
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