By Ike Uchechukwu

CALABAR- CHAIRMAN  of the Cross River State Universal Basic Education Board, SUBEB, Dr. Stephen Odey, has stated that N7.5 billion never disappeared from the accounts of the board as is being speculated and his trip to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, which froze its accounts, at this time was to clear the air.

Odey, who spoke to NDV on the progress by the board since he assumed office, said: “When I came in, I discovered that Cross River state has not been able to access its grant from 2012 to 2015 from the Universal Basic Education Commission, UBEC. N3.8 billion was approved by His Excellency, Prof  Ben Ayade   for us to be able to access our grants and as I speak we are ready to carry out project.”

Money intact: ‘’As I speak with you, nobody has accessed this money as everything has been properly laid down in our action plan which contains the project to be initiated in the state and this covers from 2012 till 2015 and it is a legal document that is binding and no kobo can be taken out without being monitored by the Abuja office, so the N7.5 billion is intact,” he said.

According to him: “Nobody can use SUBEB money outside what has been appropriated and approved and every project we do is jointly monitored by UBEC and we wrote to all the security and graft agencies because we know that some contractor may want to raise some spurious allegation.

‘’In a letter with reference number, CR/SUBEB/S/6323/VOL I /35, dated August 23, 2016, we wrote to EFCC, we also  wrote ICPC as well as the Attorney General of the Federation, we are transparent and prudent; our books are open to be verified. You can see the statement of account, we have 7, 592, 788, 012, 50,” he added.

EFCC didn’t summon me

He said he was never invited by EFCC or any anti graft agency for that matter, adding that the only time he had to go there (EFCC) was when the account of the Board was frozen and he had to write to the Attorney General of the of the federation and also visited EFCC to clarify things and the account was unfrozen.

“I have never been invited by the EFCC or any anti graft agency for any reason whatsoever, I only went there when they froze our account and the state government paid its own N3.8billion which the governor approved and that was all, so anybody spreading falsehood that I was invited in connection with impropriety or that money was taken out from our account should come out and prove it,”

His words: “There have been a lot of methods adopted by the enemies of the state all in a bid to smear this administration,    but we are aware of all their antics, we have all the records, it can be verified they can look into our books, we have no hidden agenda and we have nothing to hide.

“The N7.5billion we have in Heritage Bank will be used judiciously to carry out the projects in the action plans from 2012-2015 to the letter, we have also  published the tenders in dailies and tender journal for the public to see.”