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Tinapa, one of the projects complained about
By Akpan David, Calabar
A former senior special assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on prosecution Chief Okoi Obono-Obla has called on the citizens to mount pressure on two former governors of Cross River State, Mr Donald Duke and Liyel Imoke to give financial accounts of how they utilised the various loans they took from various banks and sources during their tenures of 16 years.
In a statement, Obono-Obla who was also chairman of Special Presidential Investigation Panel for Recovery of Public Property said that the mountains of loans which are being deducted at source have crippled Governor Benedict Ayade’s administration.
He singled out Duke as one that collected the most loans for the building of TINAPA.
Obono-Obla said: “It is time for us to demand from the two former governors an explanation.
“They should tell us what projects they executed with these loans!!”
He disclosed that in the year 2000, he challenged the resolution passed by the Cross River State House of Assembly, which approved the loans for Governor Duke in Court but that the case was frustrated when he won an appeal against the State over a ruling made by the High Court.
However, he expressed sadness that another Judge was directed to hear the case of the High Court, but that the order was never implemented.
“I wanted the High Court to pronounce the legality of Governor Duke collecting loans to execute projects such as Tinapa and Obudu Ranch Resort without appropriating these monies as stipulated by the Constitution.”
Obono-Obla said he sympathised with Governor Ben Ayade whom he said made a startling revelation recently that when he took over power in 2015, he inherited a whopping debt of N328 billion!
According to him, Ayade lamented that he has been taking home pittance of N1.8 Billion or less from the monthly allocation from the Federation account.
“The abysmal allocation Governor Ayade gets every month from the federation account is because the previous PDP government in Cross River State signed an irrevocable letter of credit with a financial institution it was indebted to, which permits it to collect almost every allocation meant for the State from source coming from the monthly allocation from the Federation accounts.
“With the meager resources at the disposal of Ayade, I have been wondering how he has been able to manage the affairs of the state these past six years!
He alleged that Duke and Imoke are among the people who want Nigerians to believe that Ayade is doing nothing yet are those who mortgaged the state.
He lamented the attitude of the elites in the state for allegedly being fixated with enjoying patronage from every government in power, so that they cannot ask leaders appropriate questions.
