By Onogwu Muhammed.
Efforts to sustain the negative onslaught against the government of kogi state regained its momentum recently when the National Bureau of Statistics launched what appears to be a jejune hatchet by turning reality into fallacy. In her unprofessional and non empirical conjecture, it listed Kogi State as the most corrupt state in Nigeria. How it arrived at this satanic preposterous conclusion leaves sour taste of reasoning.
Like the NBS, another agent of the smear campaign against the government of Kogi called BudgIT Nigeria towed the infamous lane of deceit by dishing out lies as her findings. In her orchestrated falsehood, the organization did a tabulation of states’ budgetary allocation to education and placed Kogi as the least of the 36 states, including the FCT whereas, Kogi was among the top 16 states with higher budgetary allocation for education. In our transparent way of running the government, Kogi State budgets are published on the state’s website including its performance.
This afforded many Nigerians to investigate the claim by BudgIT. In the end, BudgIT pulled down its malicious finding and apologized to Kogi State Government.
So, one isn’t surprised that the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics NBS, could come up with another dubious rating of states anti-corruption index, rating Kogi as the most corrupt state in the country.
This rating was completely devoid of fact and does not reflect the reality on the ground in Kogi State under the current administration.
A diligent establishment funded with tax payers’ money would have equipped itself with the rules of diligence by going thorough in her findings.
You may recall that Kogi State was rated by the World Bank as one of the most transparent states in the utilization of donor funds in the year 2019. Kogi state government has been enjoying such fund from World Bank since the inception of this administration because of her clean financial records.
States without clean audit report can’t enjoy such intervention from the World Bank. Kogi state had also received a commendation letter from the Accountant General of the Federation for effective implementation of International Public Sector Accounting Standard (IPSAS) Accrual Based Accounting
Same this year, ICAN –
Accountability Index report in 2019 had also rated Kogi State high; 2nd in North Central, 6th in the 19 Northern States and 12th among the 36 States of the federation including the FCT.
The Nigerian Governors’ Forum’s (NGF) Sustainability report also rated the State as one of the best in the country. In 2018, Kogi State was the first to publish her budget on the internet with other states in Nigeria.
Audited financial statement of Kogi State for the year 2018 including budget performance has been made public and was also published both in the print and online. So, what did NBS rely on at arriving at the dubious and fallacious report?
To save the state of this unfair classification, intended malice and sheer misrepresentation, the National Bureau of Statistics should as matter of responsibility review its hasty rating and return to the field to get clear information that will stand the test of empirical judgment.
Onogwu Muhammed
Chief Press Secretary to the Governor.
