National Wire About Nigerians, Nigerian Business and Other Stories
Olabode Adaramola
The embattled Chairman of Shiroro local government area of Niger State, Comrade Suleiman Dauda Chukuba, has said that he remains the substantive Chairman of the local government council.
He stated this in an interactive session with the newsmen who were in his office in Kuta, Shiroro local government Council’s Secretariat on Wednesday to confirm if he has really been impeached, the Chairman who was in his office responded by saying, “that the plot by the Legislators to impeach me did not stand as they did not follow the due process in their dealings”.
He stated further that he had not been served any notice for suspension which the Legislators alledged to have turned to his impeachment
“With regards to the suspension, till now, I have not seen or been served any letter regarding suspension or impeachment. I am still waiting for it. You can see I am in the office and that means I am still the Chairman of this Council”Chukuba maintained .
National Wire gathered that this was coming on the heels of the intervention meeting with Members of the Niger State house of Assembly on Tuesday which saved the situation and reversed the impeachment motion passed by the Councillors on the Chairman.
It would however be recalled that on Tuesday, 11 out of 14 elected Councillors in the Council had collected signatures with an intention to impeach the Council Chairman.
However, with the intervention of the House of Assembly, the Councillors on Tuesday night reversed the impeachment motion.
The embattled Chairman was accused of misappropriation and embezzling funds meant for the Internally Generated Revenue ( IGR) of the Council.
However, Chukuba said that he has not misappropriate any funds saying that the Council which is bedeviled by insecurity has not been making IGR in the past seven years.
“Sometimes in a week, we do not get more than N114,000,as an Internally Generated Revenue,( IGR) how do you expect the Local Government Council to survive on this in a week? Even the departmental programme, trainings, DTAs in a week is more than N114,000. Even my DTA is more than that amount. There is no atmosphere in Shiroro that is conducive for market as a result of armed bandits attack . Therefore, there has been no means of generating IGR,” he declared.
Speaking further on the alleged N7million misappropriation of funds for workshop, the Chairman explained that when the approval was given, there was no case backing the claim, but noted that when the workshop was finally organized for the Councillors, they refused to attend it, causing all the funds expended to go down the drain.
“Concerning the N7 million, the leaders of the Council approached me and asked me to arrange a workshop for them. It was agreed and we wrote a letter about their requests and it was approved. But there was no cash backing due to other challenges we were having and approval takes time. But that does not mean that it is misappropriation.
“On December 28th, 2020, they were supposed to hold the workshop. Everything was on ground. But on the day of the workshop, they decided they would not attend the workshop and without any reason. The banners were there in the hotel. It was a 3-Day workshop. Saying there is misappropriation when you have collected all the materials for the workshop and did not attend does not jell”, he concluded .
