Governor Ademola Adeleke said he has directed the Osun State Attorney-General to withdraw his administration’s suit against the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) over the recent freezing of the state government account.
The governor, who was re-elected to serve another four-year term on Saturday, cited President Bola Tinubu’s intervention as the basis for his withdrawal.
Mr Adeleke disclosed this on Sunday in an interview with Channels TV.
“I have instructed my attorney general to drop it (lawsuit against EFCC). Mr President has done well. He called me. What more do I want? He has waded in,” Mr Adeleke explained. “Most of these things, the president doesn’t know. The president has a lot of foreign work and jobs to do.”
The re-elected governor alleged that former Governor Gboyega Oyetola was behind the EFCC’s move to freeze the Osun government statutory bank account.
“All these things are Oyetola because he is the cousin to the president. He is dropping the president’s name. I know that the president didn’t know about the EFCC one. That is why he had to call me and stop it,” Mr Adeleke stated.
On August 5, Mr Adeleke decried a plot by the EFCC to freeze Osun’s accounts days before the election.
“The plot to freeze the state government accounts is meant to paralyse government activities ahead of the August 15th governorship election,” Mr Adeleke alleged.
The anti-corruption agency placed a post-no-debit on the state’s statutory allocation account, barely 10 days to the governorship election. The agency, in its defence, said the move was triggered by the need to safeguard public funds from looting.
“The commission noticed huge transfers of funds into different corporate entities and had to swiftly halt the trend by freezing the accounts from which such heavy funds are being moved,” the agency’s spokesperson, Dele Oyewale, disclosed.
On August 6, Mr Tinubu said he was “deeply embarrassed not by the EFCC’s exercise of its mandate backed by a court order, but by the timing of the agency’s action.”