Former Social Democratic party aspirant for Abeokuta South Constituency 1 in Ogun State House of Assembly in the 2023 elections, Hon. Ayo Sowunmi, has debunked the rumour making the round that he left the treasury of the 1998 set of Rev. Kuti Memorial High School empty during his tenure as the president of Unique Set.
An ex-president of the Unique set between 2020 and 2021, Comrade Moruf Fashina, had accused Sowunmi of leaving an empty treasury of N500 cash behind for his tenure at the expiration of his time as the president of the set in 2019, claiming he personally raised money to clear the debt incurred in the association’s name.
But Sowunmi, while reacting to the allegation yesterday to an article written by Fashina and posted on the social media platform of the set, described the allegation as unfounded and baseless, saying that at no time did he and his executive members loot the treasury of the association at the expiration of their tenure.
He explained that during his regime, he executed two notice boards’ projects after withdrawing N189,000 from the N228,000 transfered to the set’s account by members and left with N39,000 in the account, adding that the cash at hand from his treasurer, Comrade Saheed Oyewusi was the N500 Fashina claimed he left in the treasury.
Sowunmi, who challenged Fashina to go back and print out the bank statement of the Unique set account to confirm the N39,000, said he had the financial document on how his tenure executed the boards’ projects and were left with N500 cash, which he added to the N39,000 in the account, amounting to N39,500 left in the treasury before the exit of his tenure in 2019.
He said that he reacted to the allegation because he feared that his political opponents, if they had access to the information, might use it against him to scuttle his political ambition in future elections, insisting that he won’t fold his arms and watch anybody tarnish his image and family name because of a mere rumour.
The former SDP House of Assembly aspirant said that although Fashina had called him to apologise about the write-up, he decided to debunk the rumour because at no time did he and members of his executive loot the account of the Unique set and left N500 in the treasury, urging members of the set both home and abroad, to disregard the rumour as baseless and unfounded.
He said, “I wanted to debunked the rumour that is going on in our platform Unique Set 1998 set of Rev. Kuti Memorial High School, Abeokuta, by one of our past presidents, Moruf Fashina, whose regime succeeded my regime, and where he wrote in an article that my regime handed over N500 to him when he became the president.
“What happened was that we succeeded the regime of Joseph Adeboye in 2018 December and we assumed office in 2019 January and left office in 2019 December 31. We didn’t have access to the Unique set account because we were not in charge of signatories to the account; so we had to persuade Adeboye who had access to the signatoryy to come to the bank and he withdrew N189,000 from the N228,000 contributed, which when added to the N18,600 monthly dues, cash at hand is N246,600.
“And if you remove the N80,000 contributed by the executive members from the N246,600, it will remain N166,000 which was contributed by the members to do the two notice board projects. I can tell you that we didn’t leave an empty treasury behind, but we left N39,500 in it because when you remove the N189,000 from N228,000 transfered to the account, we get N39,000 plus the remaining N500 at hand after the projects’ execution we were left with N39,500.
“I am debunking this rumour of N500 and an empty treasury because I am a politician who has political ambition and I don’t want anybody to tarnish my name. My opponent might even go to that article to frustrate my ambition. What I want to tell our members in Nigeria and diaspora is to ignore the allegation. My executive and I did not steal any money and we left N39,500 in the treasury.” he added.
