This is certainly not the best of times for Mr Augustine Okhoibhole of Esan North-East local government area of Edo State as nine out of the eleven councillors in the council are presently up in arms against him over allegations of financial impropriety.
Four council chairmen, Etsako West, Etsako East, Egor and Esan West were recently sacked by Obaseki for alleged financial recklessness.
In fact, the aggrieved councillors in a letter to Governor Godwin Obaseki are demanding that Okhoibhole step down to enable an “effective investigation” of how he squandered “about N313, 698, 894.34 and abuse of office.”
Their spokesman, Mr Christian Iluobe pointedly accused the council boss of involvement in corrupt practices to enrich himself at the detriment of the welfare of the people of the local government, abuse of office and disregard to the traditional institution of the area.
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The petitioners from wards 1,2,3,6,7,8,9,20 and 11 charged that the chairman engaged in financial recklessness by operating multiple accounts in the name of the council as against a single account policy of the state and federal government.
Besides, Iluobe also accused the chairman of not been able to account for a N13,348,000 remitted to the account of the council by the revenue verification committee just as they alleged that the sum of N144,000,000 realised as Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) for the past 16 months has not been accounted for.
The spokesman claimed that the chairman has not been able to account for the balance of N76,350,894 out of the Paris Club refund that was supposed to be N116,350,894 “wherein only N100,000,000 was presented before the council exco and the Councillors. Upon which only one month arrears of about N43,000,000 was paid to local government council workers.”
Okoibhole, however, denied the allegations, explaining that the NFIU (Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit) directive does give room to chairmen to operate three accounts.
The Chairman who spoke on his mobile said:” That is what we are doing. We operate three accounts.”
On IGR, he said: “We have been paying salaries, we are not owing workers salaries, I have done many projects, I have built a livestock market. I have done drainages. All these monies did not come from my personal pocket, what we have done is even far more than N144 million naira. My wage bill on a monthly base is over N30m and for the last 25 months, I have paid salaries, I have debts that we are owing on rented properties and several other spendings.”
On Paris Club refund he said he acted as directed by the state governor to pay salary arrears. “We were owing eight months and now we are owing only two and a half months which means I have paid five and a half months.”
He added that he has built a new livestock market with abattoir and other facilities and that while the Hausa and marketers from Kogi State have moved into the market, traders from local government refused on the ground that he was trying to divide the traditional market in Uromi.
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