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Abia State Government has sealed a campaign office belonging to President Bola Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Partners (RHP) in Umuahia, the state capital.
The Renewed Hope Partners is the campaign structure for the President, being promoted across the South East zone by the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Benjamin Kalu.
An official of the RHP, who declined to have his name in print, told Vanguard that he resumed work only to find the office sealed without warning.
Information pasted on the walls at the entrance to the office located at Ojike Street, Umuahia, by the Ministry of Lands and Housing stated that the property is in contravention of the state’s tax law.
Read Also: Former Abia Official Demands Otti Reveal State Finances
It read: “Ministry of Lands and Housing. This property is in contravention of Sections 41 and 100 of the Abia State Tax Law (Codification and Consolidation), Law No. 7 of 2020. And it’s here by sealed.
“Any person, including the owner/ occupier, neighbour(s) or passer(s) by,who attempts to unseal this building is in contravention of the Abia state tax law No.7 of 2020. Be warned. Keep off.”
Efforts to obtain more information from the phone numbers listed on the document posted by the Ministry of Lands and Housing were unsuccessful, as they were unavailable at the time of filing this report.
The debate over Abia State’s finances has taken on a new intensity, as Obinna Oriaku, a former commissioner for Finance and Budget Planning, calls on the government to provide a clearer account of how federal allocations and internally generated revenue are being used. Oriaku, who served in the Ikpeazu administration, says the time has come for Governor Alex Otti to openly explain what he describes as widening gaps in the state’s financial disclosures.
His concerns are surfacing at a moment when several voices in the state are asking similar questions. Weeks earlier, the deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Benjamin Okezie Kalu, urged the government to take greater care with rising allocations coming into Abia. While addressing a coalition of political supporters last month, Kalu said the state had received an unusually high flow of inflows during the second quarter of the year. He pointed to figures suggesting Abia received about 38 billion naira each month from federal allocations and other accruals.
