MKO Abiola Airport: Stop Selling Osun Property To Your Lagos Cronies, Group Warns Aregbesola

Osun State governor, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola has been warned against selling the property belong to the good people of the State to his Lagos friends and associates under the guise of Public Private Partnership (PPP) and Concession arrangement.

A group of civil group in the State, the Civil Societies Coalition for the Emancipation of Osun State (CSCEOS) gave the warning on Sunday,while reacting to the recent announcement of the State government plan to concede the M.K.O. Abiola Airport to a private Company, AWOL International Investment at the tune of N69 billion, which the Company would return it back to the State after 30 years of sealing and signing the agreement.

The group while condemning the action of the Governor, said such arrangement was not in the best interest of the good people of the State but to expand the business and investment frontier of Aregbesola and his cronies after leaving office in 2018.

The group which has been in the vanguard of being the voice of the voiceless against the what its described as ‘mis-governance of the present administration in the State’, however rejected the concession arrangement on the Airport by the State government and warned the AWOL International Investment against accepting such a Greek offer at the tail end of Aregbesola’s administration, adding that the the next administration would revoke such an illegal and anti-peoples agreement.

“It said that the call became imperative because Aregbesola has been in the habit of prodigal leader of giving out the State property to his Lagos friends and associates which he could not give money, out of the State meager resources due to the present financial quagmire putting the state into by the present administration. Aregbesola has 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 host of others to his Lagos associates at a cheaper rate”

The Civil Society Group, in a statement issued by the its Directorate of Media and Strategy, which was signed by its Chairman, Comrade Adeniyi,Alimi Sulaiman and copies were made available to newsmen on Sunday,called on Aregbesola to account for the N3.6billion earlier spent on the Airport project, alleging that Aregbesola has turned the different white elephant projects of his administration like Airport, Market and so on, into conduit pipe where the meager resources of the State were flight to Lagos State.

The group further alleged that the State government came up with the idea of concession the Airport project into the hand of private investment to cover up the mismanagement of N3.6 billion earlier claimed to be spent on the “nothing-to- show project”, calling on the “rubber stamp State House of Assembly under the headship of Hon. Rt Najeem salaam to investigate the acclaimed N3.6 billion wasted on the phantom project before the concession idea”.

It then called on the anti-graft agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to beam 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.

According to the group: “As a formidable group and stakeholder in Osun State projects, we would not fold our arms and watching a prodigal government like Rauf Aregbesola’s administration to be selling our property to its friends, associates and cronies. We have concluded this illegal concession arrangement of M.K.O. Abiola International Airport to AWOL Investment Company because we have discovered a lot of impropriety in the arrangement”.