Magazine Fraud: Edeoga breaks silence, says LG chairmen weren’t compelled to remit 5m for LGA News
Chijioke Edeoga, the former gubernatorial candidate of Labour Party has broken silence on the issue of magazine scandal making the rounds on social media since last week.
Recall that a few weeks ago, a report by a newspaper outlet, Mainstream Media had it that the recently kicked out gubernatorial candidate was involved in 2 billion naira magazine fraud during his days as the Commissioner for Local Government matters, where he forced all the local government chairmen to remit the sum of 5million naira monthly for the publication of their monthly works in a state-owned newspaper called “LG News” which was under the coordination of Mr Edeoga.
While reacting to the allegation in a telephone interview conducted by our correspondent, Edeoga said that the truth was that the 17 local government chairmen were contributing the sum of 85M naira monthly for the publication of their monthly work, but this they did without an iota of compulsion.
He further asked whether it’s improper for leaders to sponsor the publication of their monthly works.
When asked whether the sum of 85m monthly wasn’t too much for monthly production of their works, Mr Edeoga said he has already been summoned by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) following a petition that was written by a group of Enugu State Lawyers, and pledged he would make his explanations to the anti-graft agency.
“The so-called remittances weren’t done in compulsion, the LG Chairmen were doing it willfully and with happiness. Who told them that the sum of 85M monthly remittance is enough to keep the firm running for a month? We got adverts and that was why we were able to keep the media firm running.
As for converting the firm to my own private company, everything about LG News is my brainchild. I brought the idea and I have been managing it from the first day since it was set up. I grew it to an enviable height, and the state government has nothing tangible to lay claim to my firm. It is mine and not that of the state government,” Edeoga said.
