The Coordinator of a pressure group in Delta State, Deltans Lives Matter (DLM), Mr. Christian Moses Abeh and the Deputy Coordinator, Comrade Gabriel Mamuzo, has regretted alleged sharp corrupt practices by the state government.The duo in a strong worded press statement made available to
The Story, they lamented appointment of more aides by the state governor, Dr. Ifeanyi Okowa, in the midst of salary cut.According to them, “The Delta State Governor has broken another shameful record again as the first Governor to appoint two Special Advisers and several other SSAs and SAs just one week after cutting workers salaries due to lack of funds as a result of his fake Covid-19 containment measures. “How can you cut workers salaries on one hand and in another appointed two Special Advisers whose salaries and imprests are almost #1.5million monthly and host of other Aides whose salaries and imprests will also cost over #12million monthly despite having thousands of Aides that are redundant and without offices? “What is the economic importance of these two Advisers and the numerous Aides he appointed last week to the State? The Advisers will cost Delta State treasury not less than #100million to maintain, i.e; Toyota land cruiser jeeps of not less than #40million each, furniture allowance of not less than #5million each & take off grant of not less than #5million each apart from their twenty eight days in Office allowance, while the other numerous Aides will cost the treasury over #50million. “One of the Special Adviser was the immediate past PDP South-South Chairman and almost eighty years old, while the other is a former House of Representative member who failed to return to the House due to his unpopularity. “How long will the Governor continue to deceive us with lack of funds issue, meanwhile he is busy appointing people into his government weekly and paying private image launderers on daily basis to be attacking anyone that is against his wasteful, nepotistic and deceitful style of governance despite having over twenty aides on media and communication matters that are being paid from Delta state treasury. “These sets of wasteful and useless appointments will gulp several millions of naira of tax payers money monthly, meanwhile he is telling us there is no money.
“Governor Okowa should be bold enough to tell us what is our state of finance, how much he has received and generated from 2019 to date, projects he executed, salaries of all the civil servants in the state, numbers of political appointees with their Local Government of origin and their salaries. “He should be bold to publish the names of contractors, consultants and companies that are doing projects in Delta state. “The Governor should tell us how much he has received so far as Covid-19 funds and how these monies were spent and the companies that supplied the various items including his so-called palliatives and facemasks? “The Governor should come clean and tell us more about how the new secretariat building project was awarded and who owns the company that will furnish it, why borrowing unnecessarily to fund the project when the initial amount can complete it? “The Governor should tell us who owns the Lagos based private health company (Echolab) that is using the Asaba Specialist Hospital complex to carry out their businesses, why patients are paying into the company’s account, and why did the Governor refused to commission the hospital despite been completed for over one year? “We don’t have any option than to officially inform the ICPC, EFCC, Interpol, foreign Missions and Embassies in Nigeria of Governor Okowa’s corrupt, wasteful, nepotistic and deceitful government so that the Anti-graft agencies will help us investigate how the Covid-19 funds, monthly allocation, internally generated revenues and other funds were used.”While the international communities will know his kind of person and also help to trace his assets in their Countries and help us to recover them. Deltans are jobless and hungry but he is aggressively amassing wealth for himself, family members and cronies.”You are strangulating us Governor Okowa, we can’t breathe, please resign now”, the statement added.
