Witness narrates how Ex-HoS, allies diverted public funds to private companies in court
Ogun Govt dismisses allegation of missing N6bn LG funds
By Rasaq Adebayo
The Ogun State Government has debunked an allegation that it received N63,938,887,374.47 billion in the last 21 months as federal allocations belonging to the councils without anything to show for it.
Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, Mr. Afolabi Afuape discredited the figure during the Joint Account Allocation Committee meeting for August 2021, held in his Oke-Mosan Office, Abeokuta.
The commissioner gave the actual figure due to the councils as N63,713,194,358.26 while an additional N9,904,945,970.80 had been released by the state government to argument councils’ capital expenditure for effective operation.
According to him, a total of N73,618,140,323.02 has been paid to all 20 local government councils as statutory payment within 21 months.
The commissioner explained further that the state government has been augmenting the local government accounts for it to be able to pay the firstline charges, which included primary school teachers’ salaries, local government staff salaries and allowances, primary school teachers, and local governments’ staff pension, without leaving out administrative sundry expenses for chairmen, traditional councils, statutory payment of local government service commission and check-off dues from May 2021 to July 2021.
He said this month’s statutory allocation received from the federation account for August stood at N3,433,170,398.83 and the first-line charges deduction had a total of N4,055,100,639.78, showing a deficit of N621,930,240.90, while the deficit breakdown stood at N626,218,967.27 and the surplus of allocation received over net salary stood at N4,288,726.32.
Explaining further, Afuape said, “At the end, the allocation distribution to all 20 local government councils stands at a gross deficit of N N621,930,240.90.”
