Akinwande Soji-Ojo
The All Progressives Congress (APC) in Oyo State has called on Governor Seyi Makinde to either refund the sum of N5.2 billion his administration purportedly spent on the remodeling of the Lekan Salami Stadium in Ibadan or risk being dragged to the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) to account for the alleged fraud involved in the award and execution of the “failed project.”
Oyo APC’s reaction came against the backdrop of the reports credited to the Interim Management Committee (IMC), which described the soccer pitch of the Adamasingba Stadium, the home ground of the Shooting Stars Sports Club, as falling below standard and unplayable. IMC is the body set up by the Nigerian Football Federation (NFF) to oversee the nation’s elite football league.
In a statement issued on Thursday and made available to journalists in Ibadan by its Publicity Secretary, Olawale Sadare, Oyo APC berated Makinde over his refusal to explain the details of all the stadia and sport facilities he has used the sum of N5.2 billion to fix since he claimed that the said amount was not expended on only Lekan Salami Stadium.
“Most of our people who visited the Stadium in Adamasingba to watch the recent home matches of our darling team, 3SC, against El-Kanemi Warriors and Nasarawa United respectively had given an unpleasant report about the whole stadium facility, particularly the soccer pitch which has just been confirmed as an eyesore by the IMC. This is against the impression which the Makinde administration had created through the mass media.
“It is recalled that the lid was first blown open on the very day the purportedly remodeled stadium was being recommissioned and the event attracted disgrace to Gov. Makinde and the good people of the state instead of the anticipated applause. It happened that the whole place became waterlogged and messy as a result of a minor downpour. What happened on that day should have made Gov. Makinde throw in the towel but he only followed it up another media campaign equating the substandard stadium facility with those of Maracana, Emirates and Nou Camp in Brazil, England and Spain respectively.
“Meanwhile, the revelation coming from IMC about the sordid job done on Adamasingba Stadium did not come to us as a surprise since we had established that the present PDP administration of Gov. Makinde is synonymous with fraudulent contract awards and poor delivery. This is a government that would sponsor some cronies to register some companies with the Corporate Affairs Commission today with a view to giving the emergency construction outfits tomorrow without any recourse to due process law.
“Sad enough, we also have it on good authority that the orchestrated 5 kilometres road contract award imposed on each of the 33 Local Government Council chairmen totalling 165 kilometres across the state has been given out to the same fake company being used to siphon the resources of the state since 2019. The arrangement this time is for the proxies behind the company to attend to some street roads across Ibadan at random after collecting the full sum for the inflated 165 kilometres road contract and then disappear,” Oyo APC said.
