Senator Ifeanyi Ubah
Anambra has obliged Senator Ifeanyi Ubah his threat to sue the state government for, according to him, losing a “whopping eight billion naira (N8bn) as discounts by accessing funds from the twenty five billion naira (N25bn) promissory notes which the Federal Government used to reimburse the state in tranches for the reconstruction and rehabilitation of federal roads in the state over the years.
The Senator at a press briefing at the weekend threatened to go to court against the state government if, as he put it, the authorities failed to provide full information on how they caused the state to lose such a huge amount. The Senator alleged that Anambra State, in cahoots with the Debt Management Office (DMO), raised N25bn secretly through a bond.
In his response, Commissioner for Information and Public Enlightenment, Mr C. Don Adinuba, said the Anambra State Government “is advising the senator to proceed to court immediately against it because no such amount or anything near it was lost in order to get discounts on the tranches of payment to the state government through promissory notes of the Federal Government of Nigeria.”
He said It was awful to see a national legislator manufacture figures, driven solely by an ambition to become, by all means, the next Anambra State governor.” Acts like this diminish the peddler, and proceeding to court with manufactured figures will bring such a person further to odium and public ridicule.”
According to Adinuba; ” If Senator Ubah fails to go to court with his fanciful figures and ideas, he has to resign from the Senate. The legislature, especially the Senate, is for thoughtful men and women who have prepared themselves for public service in the finest tradition. If he refuses to resign honourably, the people of the Anambra South senatorial zone know what to do.
On the alleged N25b secret bond, Adinuba said, “Only an Ifeanyi Uba can know how such a transaction is possible when the law makes it mandatory that to raise a bond in Nigeria, as in most countries of the world, the legislature, the Ministry of Finance, the Central Bank and the Securities and Exchange Commission must be involved and the proceedings must be public knowledge in the most transparent manner.
