Rauf Aregbesola


The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has vowed to take the Rauf Aregbesola government and the Infrastructure Bank, based in Abuja, to court over a N17.8bn loan recently given to the Osun State government by the Bank.

The state chapter of PDP in a statement issued by its chairman, Alhaji Gani Ola Oluwa at the weekend, said the party’s lawyers had been instructed to look at the propriety of the N17.8billion loan for the dualisation of a 45km road initially billed to cost N8billion.

The managing director of the Infrastructure Bank Plc, Mr. Adekunle Oyinloye, last month announced in Abuja that the bank was giving the Osun State government the N17.8billion loan to fund the Osogbo–Ila-Odo Road Dualisation project.

The PDP said it decided to challenge both the terms of the loan and especially the N17.8billion cost of the project which was actually designed by the Olagunsoye Oyinlola administration as the second phase of the Gbongan-Osogbo- Ila Odo- Kwara boundary road with a total cost of about N8billion. According to the PDP, the 23 km Akoda- Osogbo first phase of the project, including the massive second Osun bridge,  was constructed and completed by the Oyinlola government with about N3billion.

The party noted that even at that price, the then opposition Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) said N3billion was too much for a 23km road, stressing that it is waiting to see how the ACN government would justify the almost N18billion cost for the 45km road in the savannah part of the state.

It added that it would also ask the court to determine whether it was proper for the Aregbesola government to commit the state to such huge indebtedness without the approval of the state House of Assembly and without the contract going through the due process. 
The PDP further stressed that it was also interested in knowing whether it was just sheer coincidence that all the principal actors in the transactions, including the contractor, were from the same town in Kwara State with the wife of the governor of Osun State.
It said this became necessary following insinuations that the Kwara man behind the firm that got the contract is a brother-in law of Aregbesola and that there is also a link with the Infrastructure Bank boss, Oyinloye who also hails from Kwara State.