A socio-political group, Kwara Mass Movement (KMM), has called on the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki, to return all monies he had collected as pension from the state government.

The National Coordinator of the group, Mr. Salmon Jawondo, made the call in Ilorin on Thursday while briefing the media on “the state of the State’’.

“We watched with great consternation the twist in the pension policy for former governors in the state which had benefited Dr. Bukola Saraki in no small way. “Saraki served as the governor of Kwara State from 2003 to 2011.

“According to Saraki’s media aide, he wrote to stop his pension in August, 2015 after he benefitted from it for a period of four years,” he said. Jawondo said that the moral burden on the senate president was for him to return all the benefits, including houses cars and cash, to the state. He said that KMM was poised to return the state to the path created by those who worked for its creation, the only path that can guarantee sustainable development and prosperity. “Definitely, there had been serious deviations from the dreams and aspirations of the founding fathers of Kwara.

“There is no time in our chequered history that we need to be united than now. “We must work assiduously to reposition our dear state, where the founding fathers envisaged, so that their labour shall not be in vain,” he added. Jawondo said that KMM would provide a platform for all Kwara people to vent their ideas in the quest to build a society that could guarantee better living for diligent man without being a praise singer.

“We want a Kwara that will mop up the vast majority that have been deliberately pauperised so that they can always come back to pick crumbs that fall from the table. “We commend those who have raised the bar of diligence and patriotism in the face of maladministration and impunity in the corridor of power. “The days of reckoning are closing up on adversaries every day,’’ he added. Jawondo called on the people of the state to come out to exercise their franchise during the Nov. 4 local government councils’ elections. Saraki had said that he stopped collecting pension. Vanguard