Osun State government, Sunday, disclosed that the administration of Governor Adegboyega Oyetola has not accessed any credit facility, since assumption of office in 2018.
Former commissioner for Finance under Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola’s administration, Mr. Wale Bolorunduro, had said that the state’s negative Federal allocation for February was due to a fresh loan facility the Oyetola-led administration accessed.
The state government received as Federal allocation the sum of N379,914,981.09 for the month of February, which raised concern over its debt status among residents.
But faulting the claim, the Commissioner for Finance, Mr. Bola Oyebamiji, in a statement, stated that the negative figure was accrued to the state after the statutory debt deduction to the tune of N1.8 billion.
Oyebamiji said: “Let me say again for the umpteenth time that the current administration, led by Governor Gboyega Oyetola, has not approached any financial entity for any facility since 2018 till date. The Governor, from November 2018, has sustained his focus on priority spending. Critical expenditures of government are being funded based on available resources. Consequently, Bolorunduro’s search for non-existent fresh loan deductions, to satisfy his biased position as a possible explanation for the negative receipt from Net Statutory Revenue Allocation from FAAC in January 2022, is laughable. Our debt figures are in the open.”
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While restating that the Oyetola administration has not abandoned any of his predecessor’s project, he said: “Government is a continuum and the current government, based on her financial capacity, has continued to drive many programmes and projects inherited from the last government with a touch of restructuring and improved capacity.
“Therefore, the unsubstantiated claim of project or programme abandonment falls flat on its face. This outright falsehood has not yielded any gain to its purveyors in the past, and it will certainly not this time.
“To trivialize the volatile nature of the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) of the State and the statutory revenues from the Federation Account Allocation Committee, FAAC, in a period of the global crisis is to be clever by half. The Audited Financial Statement of the State is a good source of information regarding this. Therefore, anyone in doubt can access the available information at will.
“To wrongly accuse the State Government, led by a party you belong, of cover-up is simply irresponsible and infantile. Our IGR figures have always been in the public domain and we will not be ashamed to call the figures in a period of uncertainty. Our last Net Statutory Revenue Allocation from the FAAC which unsettled many indigenes of Osun and sympathizers, expectedly so, stood at -379,914,981.09 (excluding VAT) after the direct monthly deductions of =N=1.8billion were made. I challenge Bolorunduro to controvert this figure with verifiable evidence, if he has any, within the next 72hours.”
Source: Vanguard