A Former Artoney General of Abia State, Chief Solo Akuma, SAN, has berated a Former Commisisoner for Finance, Mr. Obinna Oriaku over his media attacks against the state government for hiring the services of an External Senior Solicitor to handle her Contractual Agreement with a Construction Company, describing Mr. Oriaku’s diatribes against the state as one driven by Ignorance.
Mr. Oriaku who has been circulating the legal document on different media platforms with a mischievous intent to blackmail the Governor and falsely subject the government and the External Solicitor to public opprobrium, went further to post the document in a WhatsApp group that has many respected Abians as members. This drew reactions and led to verbal altercations.
Irked by Mr. Oriaku’s kindergarten tantrums that were reducing the esteemed WhatsApp group to a markets square, Chief Akuma reprimanded Oriaku and subsequently tutored him.
The Senior Lawyer’s response to Mr. Oriaku reads thus:
” Obinna, I can see that you are talking out of ignorance on how to engage External Solicitors to handle Government matters. Engagement of external Solicitors by the State Government does not go through bidding process. It’s solely the responsibility of the Governor to engage External Solicitor and determine the appropriate fee to be paid. What Governor Otti did is not new. It has been done by his predecessors including the Governor you worked with and it will not stop with the present Government. There are certain legal matters the state will have you may discover that there are not lawyers in the ministry of justice that have the capacity to handle it. In order not to jeopardize the interest of the state, the Governor has every right to engage External Solicitors. I say this because I know what happens in the Ministry of Justice and the caliber of Lawyers we have in that ministry having served as one time Attorney General of Abia State. I hope the government of Abia State will ignore this your mischievous submission.
The Governor has not done anything wrong in this regard. External Solicitor who has done his job needs his money. It is the duty of civil servants to ensure that due process is followed before the funds are released. For payment of such fee when I was there the procedure was this. The Governor approves the fee. The chief of staff conveys the approval to the Ministry of Justice. The Ministry of Justice raises voucher and submits to Office of accountant general which can pay directly to the person or release the money to Ministry of Justice for payment. Unless you people who came after us have changed the procedure. If this process is followed then due process has been followed. It is very doubtful if government fund can be paid out without due process, but the process can be expedited. I am not convinced by your submissions as far as engagement and payment of External Solicitors are concerned. Leave this issue Obinna and look for something else to engage yourself”, the Learned Silk concluded.
It would be recalled that earlier in the year, Mr. Oriaku had levelled a false allegation against Governor Otti, accusing him of borrowing the sum of One Hundred and Fourty Five Billion Naira (N145 billion), and even threatened to provide a document to prove his allegation, however, Otti’s Media Team later challenged him to substantiate his false allegation, unfortunately, he ran away and never uttered a word again.
It’s highly suspected that Mr. Oriaku who has remained badly embittered after the Last Governorship election in the state, which he boasted that he was going to win after obtaining the APC Governorship Nomination Form but later failed woefully at their primaries, might be on a vicious voyage to use some moles in the civil service to steal sensitive official government documents with a view to altering and using them to blackmail the government, sadly, his efforts so far have been futile because there’s nothing iindicting to lay hand on.
Ferdinand Ekeoma
October 26,2024.
