A Peep At Gov Otti’s Audit Rport Statement: Comments from UK based indigene
Oru Leonard
The Governor of Abia State, His Excellency Alex Otti in a recent announcement said that there were discovery of fraudulent payments by the past government.
An indigene of Abia State based in the United Kingdom has raised some concerns on the recent development.
Dr Eke Eke said: “Government Otti’s announcement is a welcomed development, but should not be the end. As the English say, the devil is in the details. Sadly Governor Otti’s announcement lacks details.
The questions are;
What period was audited, last 4, 8,16 or 24 years.
How many administrations and why?
What are the names of the companies used in the fraud?
What will the government do about it
What measures would his administration put in place to make it impossible for future administration to defraud the state?
What current legislations would the government need to amend or whether the government needs to introduce new legislations?
Otherwise this is another shameful drama that would not result in holding a single person accused of corruption accountable?
For governor Otti to be taken seriously, he needs to provide more details, with less jokes and a plan of action. Only then would reasonable people take him seriously.
It may well be that , governor Okezie may have just copied the practice of his predecessors.
We wait for Otti to move from words to action. Nigerians now see words but hear actions.
We hope the issues raised by this concerned this citizen will be addressed by Gov. Otti as a matter of urgency.
Recall that Otti in a viral video said, “I have set up forensic audit as soon as I took over as Governor. So that there will be no argument, I called in one of the top three audit firms in the world and not too long ago they turned in their reports and some of the things in their reports in frightening.
“N79.3 billion naira was paid to seven Contractors for contracts that were not executed at all. Another N15.9 billion almost N16 billion was paid to 63 contractors with no supporting documents anywhere. Another N13 billion was paid to two contractors for contracts that do not exist out of these figures, N10 billion was on September 25, 2020, paid to some contractors for the construction of Abia State Airport.
“We’ve spent time trying to locate the airport and up till now, we’ve failed. One of my aides told me the other day that maybe we’re using native intelligence to look for the airport and that we should seek artificial intelligence. We’ve also involved security agents to help us find the airport,”
