Secret Reporters No place to hide
Secrets Reporters
That the immediate past government of Emmanuel Uduaghan is laced with fraud is no news but expectations that those who served under him will not come under scrutiny by the Senator Ifeanyi Okowa led government cannot be guaranteed, stated a source close to the governor.
In a show of what is to befall most of the fraudulent commissioners who ran the ministries like their empires, Secrets Reporters has learnt that one of those used in siphoning Delta State money has been given the boot by the governor.
The unlucky fellow is no other person but Dr Anthonia Ashiedu, who served as the Commissioner for Poverty Alleviation Programme, and like Ngozi OkonjO Iweal, also held a dual position by being the Executive Secretary of the Micro, Small and Medium Scale Enterprise, an agency which she used in milking the state money alongside Uduaghan who set it up.
Sources within her ministry revealed that the so called scheme was simply set as a way of enriching herself to the detriment of Deltans which it was meant to benefit. According to these sources, all Ashiedu also called Mama Prosperity did was just to pack lazy journalists with her whenever she wants to go for such micro scheme, and pay them to report what never happened.
“I fit tell you say na Jouranlists follow her chop the money. Sometimes, your colleagues are just called upon and given various envelopes containing money with the same tapes and repeated reports to put”, stated a source who spoke to us.
Further inquiries by us confirm that the iron lady ex commissioner only helped those close to her, with a source challenging her to produce one person who has been able to stand on their feet since they were given the ‘blood money’.
Her sack according to what we gathered is to enable the governor set up a panel of enquiry to determine how the fund was actually disbursed.
She is not the only one who will be facing the probe panel as former Commissioner for Transport; Ben Igbakpa also enriched himself with funds from the ministry, especially through the public transport scheme where he gave out some of the government vehicles to his cronies.
Ibakpa got so rich that he is currently building a multi million naira shopping mall on a land he collected from poor residents in Sapele on the pretense that the former properties there violated the city plan. The land in question was taken in connivance with another Delta thief, Frank Omare who served as the Commissioner for Environment under the Uduaghan regime.
