A 66-year-old pensioner, Mr. Sunday Elekwachi has said that the reign of Chief Obinna Oriaku as commissioner for Finance led to the untimely death of many pensioners and their wives in Abia, God’s own state.
According to him, while some pensioners died out of hunger others gave up as a result of lack of fund to take care of their failing health, which had already become fragile following lack of pensions as they were owed several months of unpaid pensions, despite series of biometric capturing conducted on them.
The pensioner, therefore, called on Chief Oriaku to apologize to Abians, especially pensioners, as coming out now to reveal how the N22 billion parish fund was spent cannot exonerate him as part of the people that plundered the state.
He was speaking, subsequent to the ongoing investigations of N22 billion Parish refund and its raging war in the state and the media.
But in a swift reaction to Elekwachi’s allegations, Chief Obinna Oriaku said that Elekwachi is well known for being a paid agent.
“He alluded to this when he referenced the Mayday protest of 2018. They were paid to carry out that protest, all geared towards satisfying their masters.
Explaining, he said that on the inception of the Okezie Ikpazu administration in 2015, Pensioners were being owed several months of outstanding pensions.
“The system was characterized by fraud as we had 19 sub treasuries that were being used as payment points. This system was totally abused, hence the introduction of automation, centralization, and biometric capturing of all pensioners which helped to bring sanity to the pension system.
According to him, the NUP was represented by late CN Udensi in the disbursement of the N22billion by the leadership of labour Unions in the state.
Pensioners were not left out of that scheme as others beyond their late leader were part of the team, he stated and asked the reporter to reach out to Comrade Obigwe or Okoro of the Joint Council for affirmation.
He stated that he was known for introducing reforms aimed at restructuring the state, adding that two years after his exit, as Commissioner for finance, there are still huge arrears of pensions or increased number of outstanding months.
Pensioners, he said were being owed 11 months but today it’s much more than that, “don’t forget that when Obinna was Commissioner 2015 to 2019 the federal/ state and local government were sharing an average of 380b to 400b monthly but in the last one year we have seen the allocation grow to 650b monthly partly due to exchange rate”, he stated further.
“However, 2015 to 2019 has proven to be the glorious era of Dr. Okezie’s administration. Within this period we had two major disruptions occasioned by Dr. Alex Otis’s court judgment and Dr. Uche Ogah and being in court for almost 4 years. It is clear that even with all these problems that era did better than what we have today in infrastructure and real governance issues in the State, he boasted.
But, Earlier in his address, Elekwachi said that the former finance commissioner came too late to make his claims, declaring that Oriaku never told the pensioners the truth as far as he was concerned, because “he was part of the system.”
Elekwachi, who said that he is now battling with diabetes said the ex-commissioner should have made the revelations when they mattered most.
“He should have resigned his appointment at the time of the Paris Club fiasco rather than hanging on to power till 2019 when he was flushed out of the system.
He alleged that under Oriaku’s reign as commissioner some pensioners died out of hunger and bad poor health, as they were owed several months of unpaid pensions, despite series of biometric capturing conducted on the fragile pensioners.
