The Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Kwara State are quarrelling over the recent burglary at the Ministry of Finance.
The ACN demanded the probe of the incident.
But the PDP accused the opposition of plotting to thwart ongoing police investigation.
The ruling party urged the “state police command to invite Kwara ACN officials to explain how they obtained information about the items allegedly stolen from the ministry during the suspected burglary when the police, who are by law empowered to provide such information, are yet to make a statement in that regard”.
The PDP Director of Publicity Alhaji Mas’ud Adebimpe said: “ACN is desperately trying to use misinformation and blackmail to distract the government from its determined drive to positively transform Kwara and its people.
“We also asked hardworking local government workers to disregard the ACN’s attempt to disrupt the well-intentioned efforts by the government to plug loopholes in local government expenditure and, therefore, ensure that the councils meet their obligations, including the payment of salaries, promptly.
“The PDP hail all workers for their maturity in participating in the exercise and assure them that the affected councils will pay all outstanding salaries once the exercise is completed.”
ACN Chairman Kayode Olawepo said: “The PDP is at liberty to rant all it likes on the burglary. We have made our point. And the source of what documents were stolen could be traced to newspaper publications, especially Sahara Reporters.
“As regard the council workers’ unpaid salary, we say the following: On August 20, our party issued a statement backing the National Union of Local Government Employees’ (NULGE’s) 14-day ultimatum to the Kwara State Government to pay the backlog of salary arrears owed the council workers. In the statement, we urged the government to come clean about the state finances, which we insisted were unhealthy.
“The PDP and the state government, as usual, dismissed our interventions and said we were inciting workers. But, of course, the government’s spokesman gave contradictory reasons on why they were owing council workers. Addressing reporters on August 22, the Finance Commissioner Demola Banu claimed the delay was due to shortfall in allocations from the Federation Account.
“On August 26, Governor AbdulFatah Ahmed himself said: ‘There had been drops in the allocation to the states, and delays in allocation meetings and allocation of funds to the local governments. The shortfall since May, June and July, this year, has not been helpful..’
“When countered with the fact that all the states of the federation are affected by this shortfall and that Kwara alone is owing workers for months, the government made another excuse, back in August, that the salary delay was due to some screening (biometric) to clean up the finances of the councils and guarantee accountability…”