Unpaid Salary: Osun Speaker Defends Aregbesola’s Integrity

The Speaker of Osun State House of Assembly, Hon. Najeem Salam, has defended the integrity of the State Governor, Rauf Aregbesola, saying the governor remains a man of strong character, honesty and integrity.
The Speaker absolved the governor from blame on the financial status of the state, stressing that it was the openness of the governor that exposed the financial predicaments of other states in the country.
He assured that the 34 billion naira bailout loan obtained by the state from the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, would go a long way to address the challenges facing the state and called on the workers to cooperate with the government to move the state forward.
The Speaker made the remarks in Abuja Tuesday at the opening ceremony of a workshop organised by the Anti-Corruption Academy for members of states Houses of Assembly from the South-West Zone of the country.
The Speaker who spoke through his Deputy, Hon. Akintunde Adegboye said transparency and honesty go together and this has remained the watchwords of the present political leadership of Osun state.
He dismissed insinuations that the problem over unpaid salary in the state had to do with corruption, insisting that there was no iota of truth in the allegation.
The law-maker said the capacity building workshop for legislators was timely as it would update their skill and fine tuned their knowledge on transparency, probity and accountability in governance.
The Provost of the Anti-Corruption Academy, Professor Sola Akinrinade said the fight against corruption in the country cannot be undertaken by President Muhammadu Buhari alone and called on all law-makers, civil servants, members of the private sector and ordinary Nigerians to join in the crusade against corruption.
“The agenda for the next three days is sensitization and capacity building to ensure that legislators are aware of the requirements of the law in relation to probity, accountability, integrity and transparency and the need for them to thses values in the performances of their official duties,” he said.
Professor Akinrinade added that ” the other part of it is the forewarning of what lies ahead for those who choose to pursue the path of perfidy, that there is the long arm of the law waiting to bring to justice all those who are caught perverting the process and helping themselves to unfair proportion of the national cake, especially the portions that do not belong to them.”
THE NATION