Osun State Governor, Mr. Rauf Aregbesola, has described the allegations by Justice Folahanmi Oloyede against him as deliberate falsehood fabricated to tarnish his image and to set the people against him.
Aregbesola said this in Osogbo on Saturday while speaking at the 50th birthday party of the Speaker of the State House of Assembly, Mr. Najeem Salaam.
Although the governor stopped short of saying the judge was used by the opposition, he said the petitioner and those using her had failed woefully.
The governor said it was condemnable to find just a lie in anything a judge said, adding that one lie was enough to rubbish the image of any judge.
He said his administration did not collect N538 billion contrary to the claim of the judge that the money was the total amount the governor collected on behalf of the state and its local government councils and not N204 billion which Aregbesola disclosed to the lawmakers during the inauguration of the assembly in June.
Aregbesola said, “After examining the petition written by the judge, I asked myself if she had any point but I found none. It is a tissue of lies. There is no iota of truth in it. They said Osun government collected N538 billion.
“The judge does know the code of conduct of judicial officers. She dabbled into what she should not have dabbled into.
“For those thinking her allegations are true: assuming without conceding that Osun collected N10 billion in a month and we have 48 months in four years, the total money collected in 48 months would be N480 billion. That is not even up to N538 billion she claimed but we did not collect N10 billion a month, we did not even collect N5 billion.
“That fact deflates one of the lies. If the judge is telling lies, why could not journalists check how much Osun is collecting from the records? If I collected N538 billion, Osun would have been far better than how it is.”
He blamed former President Goodluck Jonathan for the economic woes the nation is experiencing now. He said the United States of America confirmed that one million barrels of crude oil was stolen on a daily basis.
– Punc
