I’m ready for your probe, says Ladoja - You’re jittery - Akala

By Adeolu Adeyemo - 01.02.2008

FORMER governor of Oyo State, Senator Rashidi Ladoja, and his successor and former deputy, Chief Adebayo Alao-Akala, continued to trade words on the setting up of a Judicial Panel of Enquiry to probe the former’s administration.

While Ladoja said he was ready for the probe but that Akala should let the probe cover the period between 2003 - 2007, Akala said Ladoja was only being panicky.

The former governor, who spoke through the secretary to the state government during his tenure, Mr. Ayodele Adigun, said he was not afraid of the probe but charged Governor Akala to be objective about the exercise.

Ladoja stated that no probe could intimidate him or make him to deviate from his democratic principles, but asked Alao-Akala to appoint a credible serving or retired judge to head the panel.

He said the probe could only produce barren results at the end of the day. Ladoja said Akala was only outto frustrate all his perceived political enemies, but insisted that the move would not move him an inch.

“At the end of the day, they will get a corrupt judge with doubtful integrity and questionable character to head the panel, but we are not afraid of their panel. In the first instance, Ladoja was Akala’s benefactor. He does not have the moral right to say that he wants to set up a panel against him. What he did is uncharitable for he has bitten the hand that fed him but all the same, we shall meet at the panel,”Adigun said.

“We are waiting for the panel to commence its sittings and we are ready to appear before it because there is no fraudulent practice in our deeds and we can never be scared by the institution of any panel of enquiry into the activities of the past government in the state,” he said.

Akala, reacting through his Special Adviser on Public Communications, said, “It is not surprising that Senator Ladoja has reacted to the intention of the state government to institute the panel, but we all know that his pronouncement today was borne out of panic.

“It was the same Senator Ladoja who sought an injunction in court on January 7 this year on the basis that the proposed administrative enquiry of the Akala administration will be politically biased against him, even though, it was the same administrative enquiry that he used in his purported indictment of Governor Alao-Akala in March last year.

“Now that the state government has instituted a judicial panel of enquiry which he suggested in his prayer to the court on January 7, he is now crying foul, a symptom which suggested utter confusion and political rigmarole.

“What is more, the state government made it expressly clear that the enquiry will be open and public.

“The Akala administration does not need any unsolicited counselling from anyone, particularly a politician who has proved that he is not a master of his trade. Again, the state government states categorically that the judicial panel of enquiry will be fair and open,” he said.