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• Says only looters‘ll flay action
From Okey Sampson, Umuahia
Board of Trustees (BoT) and National Caucus member of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Prince Benjamin Apugo, has commended the Abia State Governor Alex Otti for setting up the Judicial Panel of Inquiry for the Recovery of Government Properties and Funds, saying that only looters in the state would condemn the move.
Speaking in Umuahia, Apugo said officials of the previous administrations “looted the state blind and no governor who will not only want to rebuild the state, but want to have the trust and confidence of his people, will not want to recover the looted funds.”
On the recovery of government properties, Apugo urged the Panel to beam its searchlight properly on the activities of the administration before that of Ikpeazu.
“That administration did so many things wrong. Hiding under Project Implementaion Unit (PIU), they forcefully collected people’s land without compensation and in turn allocated them free to their cronies.
“To perfect their atrocities, the governor then removed a qualified Town Planner which the law establishing the PIU required and brought in a barber as the General Manager who was doing his bidding.”
Responding to misgivings in some quarters that the probe shouldn’t have targeted at Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu’s administration alone, Apugo said it was always good to state from somewhere.
“I am not in government, but as an individual, I will like both the administrations of T.A Orji and Ikpeazu to be probed, but if Governor Otti in his wisdom decided to probe that of Ikpeazu for now, so be it; after all, it is said in Igbo land, ‘one will use the chick to get the mother hen.’
He said further: “Otti should not listen to those threatening hell and brimstone over the Panel. They are not Abians who own the money, but are looters of the said funds; nobody who was not involved in the looting should be worried about the Panel.”
On Otti’s suspension of all Permanent Secretaries and the HoS in the state, Apugo said it was the right thing to be done.
“There is no way he would have allowed those who were part of the problems all these years to remain in office; they would have remained cogs in the wheel of progress of his administration and Abia would not have been better.
“That was the problem former President, Muhammadu Buhari had. When he came in, instead of removing Godwin Emefiele as CBN Governor, Buhari allowed him, Emefiele dealt with Nigerians and at the end disgraced himself,” Apugo said.
