Kwara opposition figure Mohammed Dele Belgore SAN on Thursday hit back at the Kwara State Government and the PDP following what the ACN chieftain deems a deliberate misrepresentation of his New Year Message.

"Mr. Belgore is against retrenchment of, or untimely payment of all entitlements due to, workers. What (he) meant in specific terms is that Kwara fund is being used to run a patronage system that does not benefit the masses. That this patronage system takes precedence over provision of basic infrastructure/amenities is what should alarm all Kwarans," Belgore’s media aide, Rafiu Ajakaye, said in a statement on Thursday.

Belgore had in the message flayed the government for floating a 2013 budget in which recurrent expenditure, estimated at N51b, far outweighs the (productive) capital expenditure pegged at just N42.6b. Both the government and the PDP characterised Belgore’s comment to mean a call for mass retrenchment of workers. Kwara state chapter of the CPC sided with Belgore, lampooning the PDP for twisting the message rather than call the attention of its government to the retrogressive budget estimate.

Ajakaye said in a statement on Thursday that the senior advocate abhors engaging people in gutter language, adding that Kwarans get to know of the much-vaunted giant strides of the PDP government only on the pages of newspapers and on television screens.

The statement added: "Urbane and tough advocate of issue-based politics, Mr Belgore would not engage the PDP in gutter language, as has become the habit of its spokesman, in the name of politics. Also, the jury is out about the so-called achievements of the PDP government which our people see only on TV screens and on the pages of newspapers.

However, for the purpose of setting the record straight, we wish to state the following:

"Followers of Kwara politics know our stand on what has become a culture of late payment of workers' salary and shabby treatment of the work force. Instead, it is KWSG that is retrenching workers in a wicked and dubious way by orchestrating the sack of LG workers without giving any official confirmation. It is the height of deceit especially after Ahmed swore no such thing would happen ....

"That KWSG is about the worst culprit of ghost worker syndrome as it has no verifiable official data on its workforce, deliberately creating avenue for corrupt PDP officials to rip off the state. Nothing exposes this than the fact that several months after it ran a sham verification of workers, the exercise remains inconclusive.

"That we challenge KWSG to tell the world how much it spends monthly from public fund on bailing out the tottering Shonga Farm which the white farmers admit has 'passed its sell-by date' out of the cobweb of debts, even when we are told that the state now owns just 25% in an investment built largely with Kwara resources. It is all of these, amongst other wastages, that really eats away the state's meagre resources, not the paltry sum being paid the poor civil servants who deserve their wage."

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