By Comrade Olabode Akinwale
SOMETIME IN late 2023, immediately after the unexpected demise of Arakunrin Odunayo Akeredolu the erstwhile governor of Ondo State and the ascension of his deputy, Hon. Lucky Aiyedatiwa as the substantive governor, the State’s Exco or better still, the cabinet was dissolved and later reconstituted with some new and old faces surfacing.
Throughout the seven years or thereabout of late Odunayo Akeredolu, also known as Aketi, the person who superintend the affairs of the state’s ministry of finance was Hon. Wale Akinterinwa.
However, Hon. Wale Akinterinwa could not make a return to the new cabinet because he was known to be neck deep in his political ambition to be governor of the state. And as a result, Akinterinwa left the ministry without leaving a single sheet of paper as handover note for the person that took over after him.
During the twilight days of Aketi as governor, it was in the news how some very few but powerful cabinet members turned the state’s commonwealth to personal entitlements.
Ondo State almost heamorrhaged to death while the ministry of finance then looked on complicitly or helplessly!
Luckily for Ondo State, and in the wisdom of the new governor and his love for the state, Aiyedatiwa looked for and brought forth Mrs Omowunmi Isaac who is the former Director General of Ondo State Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) under Aketi to help sanitize and put the ministry of finance back in shape.
Mrs Omowunmi Isaac is a professional accountant and finance expert with local and international training and work experience.
She is a British trained chartered accountant who holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Accounting and Finance from Middlesex University London and an MSc in Professional Accountancy from University of London.
With all the above education, training and experience, Mrs Omowunmi Isaac has literally being working to bring water out of the financial rock of Ondo State.
Since her assumption of office, financial loop or leak holes have been effectively plugged.
Information that is verifiable has it that all statutory payments such as monthly salaries and MDA’s Running Grants (RG) are always approved, authorized and paid as at when due. It is noteworthy to know that the January, 2025 salaries and RG have been paid.
All other important projects are also being funded without having to borrow a dime from anywhere by the state government.
However, because of the Honourable Commissioner’s reluctance to allow the financial resources of the state to be pillaged, the woman is daily being harassed, threatened and assaulted.
It is therefore apt to conclude that corruption is unashamedly fighting back in Ondo State.
Those who are used to the old, untidy and corrupt system of having their ways are now meeting with brick walls and they are not hiding their frustration anymore.
As recent as Friday, the 24th of January, 2025, a Grade Level 14 officer in the Ministry of Women Affairs still displayed a grievous act of indiscipline, gross misconduct and criminal assault against the office and person of the Honourable Commissioner for Finance.
Available information has it that one Messr Ayejuni Orimisan Abel, a level 14 accountant, dubiously manoeuvred his way through the security network in the ministry of finance and barged into the commissioner’s office without due protocol or process.
After several hot altercations with security personnel who were prepared to bundle him out of the ministry, the Honourable Commissioner intervened and told the officer to follow due bureaucratic channels on such matter, an advise the officer blatantly rejected.
It was at that point that people around started to suspect the real intention of the intruding officer. That he couldn’t have come to follow up on a file from his ministry and be behaving in such manner as if sent to come and harm the commissioner in some diabolic ways or something similar to that.
His uninvited presence may also have been a ploy to create untoward scenes that can either embarass the commissioner or tarnish her image.
It is difficult to have any better way to describe corruption fighting the authority back than the barbaric and uncourteous display put up by Messr Ayejuni that fateful day.
Thankfully, the state’s Commissioner of Police coincidentally was on hand to put the situation under control and the truant civil servant put in check.
Ondo State Accountants Forum has condemned and dissociated itself from the crude attitude of the officer in question.
It is hoped that the unruly behavior of the Ondo State civil servant in the ministry of women affairs who bypassed all the Directors of the ministry of finance and the Permanent Secretary to gate crash into an honourable commissioner’s office will not go unpunished.
For the first time in several years, the financial resources of the state is being prudently managed and judiciously disbursed, why then would some politicians want to use any gullible civil servant to kill the goose that is laying the golden eggs?
To be continued…
