Kwara Hotel: Government's Reaction Afterthought, Deceitful - PDP
...insists Gov Abdulrahman partnered his cronies to perpetrate looting
The Kwara State People's Democratic Party (PDP) has described as deceptive and uninspiring the explanation offered by the State government on the looting of properties of the state-owned Kwara Hotel.
In a statement issued on Monday by its State Publicity Secretary, Olusegun Olusola Adewara (Sholyments), the Party said the statement released on behalf of the government by the Commissioner of Business, Innovation, and Technology (BIT), Damilola Yusuf, was not only deceitful but taking Kwara people for fools as the statement failed the simple test of logic and rationality.
According to the Party, the government's defense was a face-saving attempt to cover up its complicity in the criminal and barbaric looting of assets of the legacy hotel. It added that the looting of the hotel was a precursor to its sale by the present administration under Mallam Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq.
The statement said: "We are disappointed by the thoughtless statement from the Abdulrahman-led government which attempted to deceive the people of Kwara on the planned sale of Kwara Hotel and the ongoing looting of the hotel properties. We insist that the ongoing looting of Kwara Hotel is a state-sponsored act, which is being clandestinely orchestrated by Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq to reward his party members who have been crying for neglect.
"Our Party insists that what has been happening at Kwara Hotel in the past few days is not auctioning but looting of properties. By practice, an auction of the government's properties always goes through a transparent process as against what we saw with Kwara Hotel, which was shrouded in secrecy. Normally, the bidding process ought to have been made public with items listed to be auctioned itemized for prospective bidders and such process made public. This is the conventional tradition that the government or its agencies are mandated to uphold whenever public property is billed for auctioning.
"If the State government insists that the process was transparent, we challenge it to make public names of the four registered auctioneers it claimed to have engaged for the auctioning. We also demand that the government make public the list of items that were spelt out for auction with their unit price tags.
"Additionally, we ask that in the spirit of transparency, the government should disclose to the public the amount of money it generated from the sales of all the property belonging to Kwara Hotel.
"The Abdulrazaq-led government is reminded of the longstanding loss of trust in it among the Kwara public. Kwarans have not forgotten how the government deceived Kwara Hotel workers. The government initially promised not to terminate the employment of workers of the hotel but later deceptively dismissed them. Kwarans, therefore, do not have any trust or confidence in any statement issued by the government and its representatives."
No comments