The immediate past chairman of the governing council of Abia State Polytechnic, Aba, Prince Christopher Enweremadu, has said that the current chairman of the council did not get his facts right about the contentious N2 billion bank overdraft.
Enweremadu, a former Speaker of Abia State House of Assembly, frowned at the behaviour of the new chairman, contending that his allegation that the fund was mismanaged was not backed by facts and figures.
The former Abia State Commissioner was reacting to a statement credited to the current chairman of the institution’s governing board which was published in The Nation of 9th September, where he alleged that Enweremadu mismanaged the N2 billion loans.
The former commissioner said, “If the chairman had gone through the history of the polytechnic, he would have appreciated that when we came on board, the institution owed N1.1 billion to several banks and also seven months’ salary arrears to staff”.
“After a careful review, my council agreed that the sum of N2 billion be taken as overdraft with an interest of N25 million and by this time no bank was willing to lend any money to the institution, which made us to go for a ‘term loan’ with a lesser interest rate”.
“When the N2 billion term loan came, we had reduced the bank loan to N900 million and part of the agreement with First Bank was to buy over the loan which they did and tellers were issued to Abia State Polytechnic and by the time they took their bank charges, we had N1 billion left”.
“Out of this amount, we had a running battle with the then Rector on what to do with the remaining N1 billion. The then council insisted that the amount should be used to repay the loan through building hostels that would yield money, but the management insisted on using it to pay salary arrears.
“The staff salary by then was N134 million monthly and from the N1 billion that was left, about six months’ salary was paid off, so the chairman saying that contracts were wrongfully awarded smirks of mischief,” he said.
He added, “Only about N35 million was paid to a contractor, as most of the said contracts were awarded without any money to back them up, so the current chairman talking about mismanagement of funds when we left N210 million which he has not accounted for till date.”
“It should be noted that since the N2 billion was gotten without the account being serviced, interest was being taken from the principal sum, so this is a case of kettle calling pot black, but this man took the sum of N26 million of the school fund to refurnish an office that has no problem.
“Here is a man who increased his sitting allowance from N64,000-N260,000 and goes there three times in a week to enable him claim the money from an institution with lean resources; if this is not fraud and mismanagement, I wonder what it is,” he charged.
“I want to appeal to Abia State Government to take a critical look at the accounts books of the Polytechnic to know exactly what happened to the said N2billion, as no bank gives loans to institutions to pay staff salary.
“By the time I left as the Chairman of the Governing Council of Abia State Polytechnics, we were able to reduce the backlog of salary arrears down to four months, but now, the salary arrears have gone up to seven months, which is the reason the staff are on strike.”