Osun State Governor, Mr. Rauf Aregbesola, has been warned against selling properties belong to the people of the state to his Lagos friends and associates under the guise of Public Private Partnership (PPP) and Concession as such arrangements are not in their best interest.

The Civil Societies Coalition for the Emancipation of Osun State (CSCEOS) gave the warning on Sunday in a statement signed by its Chairman, Comrade Adeniyi, Alimi Sulaiman, while reacting to the recent announcement of the state government of plans to concede the MKO Abiola Airport project to a private company, AWOL International Investment at a cost of N69 billion, on the condition that the company would return the facility back to the state after 30 years of sealing and signing the agreement.

The group which has been in the vanguard of opposing some actions of the present administration in Osun State, however, rejected the concession arrangement on the Airport by the State government and warned against AWOL International Investment accepting such a Greek offer at the tail end of Aregbesola’s administration.

It said that the call became imperative because Aregbesola had earlier dashed out landed property of the state like old Ministry of Agriculture and Natural resources, Ilobu road, Osogbo, demolished Fakunle Comprehensive High School, Gbongan road, Osogbo and several others to his Lagos associates at giveaway prices. The group called on Aregbesola to account for the N3.6 billion earlier spent on the Airport project, alleging that the Governor has turned the different white elephant projects of his administration like Airport, Market and so on, into conduit pipes through which meagre resources of the state are ferried to Lagos.

The group further alleged that the state government came up with the idea to concession the airport project into the hand of private investment to cover up the mismanagement of N3.6 billion earlier claimed to have been spent on the “nothing-to- show project”. It also called on the State House of Assembly under the headship of Mr. Najeem Salaam to investigate the N3.6 billion claim wasted on the phantom project before the concession idea.

It also called on the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to beam its searchlight on how the state government mismanaged the huge amount of public funds on a project and later came up with the idea of concession after failure to account for earlier spending on the same project.

“As a formidable group and stakeholders in the Osun State project, we would not fold our arms and watch a prodigal government like Rauf Aregbesola’s administration to be selling our property to its friends, associates and cronies. We have concluded arrangements to approach a court of competent jurisdiction to stop this illegal concession arrangement of MKO Abiola International Airport to AWOL Investment Company because we have discovered a lot of impropriety in the arrangement,” Adeniyi said.

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