Kwara State House of Assembly has restated its commitment towards recovering state government’s properties in private hands, to ensure equity, probity and accountability in government owned companies.
Ali Ahmad, the House speaker, gave the assurance in Ilorin while inaugurating an ad-hoc committee to investigate allegation of misappropriation relating to government assets under Harmony Holdings.
The investigation, according to the speaker, became imperative as the legislature was not conversant with several stories, petitions and reports of mismanagement and alleged fraud of Harmony Holdings, adding that its subsidiaries, or some of its staff converted or sold choice properties to themselves or their acquaintances and allegedly failed to show evidence of payment of commercially competitive prices into appropriate accounts.
The speaker, who pointing out that, “director’s breach of fiduciary duties to the company has been wide spread and other sundry allegations inconsistent with running of a purely commercial, profit-driven conglomerate,” commended the state governor, Abdul Fatah Ahmed, for coming up with the initiative of Harmony Holdings Limited, to “oversee other smaller and industry-specific entities” to reinvigorate and redirect all potentially income-yielding and revenue generating agencies and parastatals of government.
He said the investigation was geared towards establishing facts, proffer recommendations and ensure that the company, which he said, was the repository of the state’s collective wealth, was salvaged and restored to the path of profitability, and enjoined Kwarans to give the committee and the Holdings the benefit of doubt.
He also allayed the fear that the House was out to witch hunt or victimise any one, just as he urged members of the ad-hoc committee to discharge their duties in accordance with the salient provisions of Section 128 of the nation’s Constitution.
He disclosed that the House had given a week of grace to individuals or institutions to return what they had earned unduly from the company to the state, and praised a member of the committee, Adamu Usman, who returned his landed property given to him by the company free of charge many years ago in Abuja.
Responding, the chairman of the ad-hoc committee and House leader, Hassan Oyeleke, promised to carryout thorough investigation, without fear or favour, saying, “We will not leave any stone unturned in our attempt to unearth the misery behind the management of our collective resources.”
Meanwhile, a member of the committee, Adamu Usman, who was a senior accountant of the company between 2012 and 2013, has willingly surrendered all benefits accrued to him, to enable him to be fair in the discharge of his duty, and said the investigation was long overdue.
