- Safiu Kehinde
Former Ogun State governor, Ibikunle Amosun, has fired back at Pat Utomi following alleged claim of contract violation resulting to the seizure of Presidential jets.
While Utomi had tagged Amosun as the cause of the fiasco, the Professor of Political Economy went ahead to disclose how Amosun made him and his South African partner lost N200 million worth of investment which they commenced during Amosun’s predecessor’s tenure.
Reacting to the accusation, Amosun disclosed how he tried to compensate Utomi over a construction project he built on a land belonging to the Ogun State government.
Amosun claimed to have offered Utomi another land which the later allegedly rejected.
According to Amosun, the estimated cost invested on the construction, as assessed by his team, was within the range of N35 million to N50 million as against Utomi’s N200 million claim.
“I immediately raised a team for verification and to know what to do. The team I sent said the land was inappropriate because the said construction was being done in the car park of the Ogun property on Mobolaji Bank Anthony Road in Lagos State.
“But he didn’t want another place because, according to him, the place in question gave more visibility. After our in-house assessment, my team concluded he could not have spent more than N35m or at most, N50m on the construction as of then. At that point, I decided to visit myself.”
“As part of his determination to sway me, he deployed his Centre for Value in Leadership, CVL, through the instrumentality of an Award. At first, it all looked curious that I’d just been in office for about two years, and here I was being given an award, so I rejected it.
“Utomi knows his case did not even have any legs to stand on. He is not different from Zhongfu International Investment FXE. He knows he can not lay claims to any lawful damage done to his investment. All he has tried to do is a ‘me too’, which is very disgraceful.” Amosun stated.