Rivers State governor, Nyesom Wike and his Benue State counterpart, Samuel Ortom, have challenged President Muhammadu Buhari to name the governors he accused of stealing funds allocated to local government councils in their respective states.
Buhari, in a speech at the parley with members of the Senior Executive Course 44 of the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), on Thursday, alleged that governors are stealing local government allocations.
The president said it beats anyone’s imagination how some State governors would collect money on behalf of council areas in their states, only to remit just half of such allocation to the council chairmen, who would further deplete the remittance in further pilfering of public resources.
“Speaking from personal experience, a Chief Executive of a State, a qualified lawyer, trained, the treatment of local governments, what they did, this is my personal experience. If the monies from the federal government to State governments is N100 million, let’s put it at N100 million. N50 million will be sent to the chairman with a letter that he will sign that he received 100 million.
“The governor will pocket the balance and share it with whoever he wanted to and then the chairman of the local government will see how much he must pay in salaries, to hell goes development. Monies for the salaries will be given and the balance will put in his pocket. This is what is happening,” he had said.
But speaking at the inauguration of the Mgbuosimini internal road project in Port Harcourt on Friday, Wike and Ortom challenged Buhari to name the governors he claimed are stealing local government money.
Wike denied ever taking funds meant for local government areas since he became governor in 2015, adding that Buhari’s comment is defamatory.