Bisi Akande: I’ve never given or demanded a bribe all my life

Bisi Akande, former interim chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), says he has never given or demanded a bribe all his life.

In his autobiography “My Participations” unveiled on Thursday, Akande said he was incarcerated at Agodi imprisons by then military government of Muhammadu Buhari over trumped-up charges of corruption.

He was released after two years following another military coup by Ibrahim Babangida.

When he became governor of Osun state, Akande said he was almost impeached because he would not approve bogus allowances for members of the state assembly.

The author also said he was informed that bribes had to be paid to labour union leaders in order to avert incessant industrial strikes during his tenure.

“As SSG and Deputy Governor, my take home pay was much lower than what I was earning as an executive of BP. In the two offices I held, I had no authority to approve government expenditure. I never took bribe and never gave bribe to anyone,” the author wrote.

“No one ever wrote any petition against me to the EFCC, ICPC or the police for any fraud or wrongdoing during my term of office.

“I never gave or demanded bribe from anyone all my life. All of us who served in my government, all my commissioners and others, came out the way we went in. No one was richer and not a single one of my political appointees was indicted after we left office despite that an opposition party came to power after us.

“The house of assembly may have found common cause with Omisore because of money. The members complained that we did not give them money and cars. We could not because we simply did not have money.

“The trick, I was told, was that any time a notice of trade dispute was served to the government, the Osun State leadership of the Joint Negotiating Councils, the Nigerian Union of Teachers, the National Union of Local Government Employees and the Nigerian Labour Congress would be bribed with money to soft-pedal and cooperate with the government.”

Akande also lamented how civil servants deployed every opportunity to inflate prices of materials purchased and contracts awarded.