- As Tinubu Maintains Innocence, Accuses Political Opponents of Mischief…
By Shakirudeen Bankole
A former Deputy National Chairman of the People’s Democratic Party, Chief bode George, has reiterated that “excessive leakages of revenues and monumental corruption,” were responsible for slow growth in Lagos state.
The former Military Governor of Ondo State, while speaking on Arise Television, Friday, said the greed of the few, has further widened the existing gaps between the rich and the poor in the state, and it was time to address the issue head-long.
Bode George said, in spite of the enormous resources in Lagos, the state has continued to experience slow and disproportionate growth output because of revenue leakages and wastage by the state government.
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He said the Lekki Toll Gates, Outdoor Advertising Monopoly allegedly awarded a company with links to Seyi Tinubu, and the appointment of Folashade Tinubu as the Iyaloja of Lagos are some of the drain pipes allegedly fueling the inequitable distribution of wealth in Lagos state.
He also accused the former Governor and one of the national leaders of the ruling All Progressives Congress(APC), Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu of reportedly “pocketing the state, and living large on the collective resources of the people.”
According to him, “my teacher told me that Democratic governance is the utilization of the resources of the land for the common people.”
He however queried: “But see what is happening in Lagos today! There are so many leakages in the system.
“Who owns Alpha Beta? What use is it in the system? We have Lagos Internal Revenue Service (LIRS). What is their job? Yet, we have a private company like Alpha Beta collecting revenue on its behalf. Why is that so”.
Commodore George(rtd), who insisted he wasn’t political in his position, claimed that there is an ambiguous clause in the agreement between Alpha Beta and Lagos state government that makes the company to continue to milk the state.
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He said, ” If fo example, Alpha Beta collected N30billion monthly for the government, there is a clause somewhere that would make it collect N7billion as it’s commission! That is a big leakage. That is sacrilegious.”
“The agency should be scrapped,” he reiterated. Recall that in a long epistle recently authored by the PDP chieftain, he had accused Tinubu of pocketing about 15% of an estimated N600bn collected as revenue annually in Lagos through Alpha Beta.
He wrote: “This explains the mysterious agency called Alphabeta, the consultancy firm that has been collecting 15 percent of the Lagosian Internal Generated Revenue since 1999. Created by Bola Tinubu, the firm does not do any known productive duties to enhance our revenue. It is a mere sponging apparatus, siphoning trillions from our coffers every year.”
However, Tinubu, an erstwhile Lagos State governor has consistently claimed innocence over these allegations. According to him, there is no iota of truth in these claims as they amount to political statements by envious opponents who want to capitalize on the current crisis to create political challenges for him.
Recall also that the former Lagos state governor recently accused political opponents of telling lies against him while attempting to “manipulate people’s anger to advance political objectives that had nothing to do with the subject matter of the protests.”
