Osun State Governor, Mr Rauf Aregbesola, on Wednesday responded to an allegation put forward by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that the state government was doctoring documents to cover misappropriations ahead of a coming prob.
Mr Aregbesola dismissed the claims , insisting that the opposition party was notorious for corruption at all levels and that Nigerians rejected PDP because of its corrupt tendencies in the last presidential polls that produced President Muhammadu Buhari.
The Governor, who spoke through the Director of the Bureau of Communication and Strategy in the Office of the Governor, Mr Semiu Okanlwon, in Osogbo was reacting to PDP’s allegation that the Osun State government was manufacturing documents in anticipation of a purported probe of the bailout loans by the Senate.
Manufacturing Documents
The State government, in its statement on Wednesday described the PDP’s reasoning and conclusion that the government had hired an accounting firm to help it cook books of its expenditure since 2014 as warp.
“PDP’s allegation is a fall out of what the party represented while it lorded over Nigerians. If the PDP government had not been good at falsifying and altering financial documents fraudulently, it would not have easily jumped into conclusion that Osun has hired a firm to help it perfect fraud.
“The PDP’s statement merely reminds us why, since the anti-people party was booted out of office, Nigerians have been treated to series of mind-blowing financial malfeasance. Of course, the humongous financial recklessness of the PDP which is now public knowledge could only have been result of many years of “manufacturing documents”.
“Our media organisations must be wary of the corrupting influence of PDP and its warped logic. When a party says a government has hired an accounting firm to “manufacture documents” to cover fraud, the responsibility the society places on the media compels it to carry out adequate investigation by subjecting such information to veracity and reliability tests.
“In the first place, are accounting firms set up to cook up books? Is this the first time a state government would be engaging service firms to build capacities and enhance government’s service delivery to the people? An accounting firm that subverts accountability has already destroyed the basis of its existence.
“If our media houses had taken cognisance of these facts, it is certain that the PDP’s jejune claims would have ended up where it really belongs: the thrash can,” he said.