Osun State Governor, Rauf Aregbesola over the weekend said that the activities of crude oil thieves in the Niger Delta during the last administration  wrecked the Nigerian economy and led it into recession.

Aregbesola made the claim while receiving members of the Hon. Kehinde Agboola – led House of Representatives Committee on Basic Education and Services who paid him a courtesy visit at the Government House in Osogbo.

He stated that his administration, which has received a lot of attacks from the media and public was making the best out of a terrible economic situation in its handling and treatment of workers.

“For the records, I paid 100 percent of basic salaries up until 2013. However, Nigerians easily forget that in June of 2014, calamity struck the Nigerian economy when a huge magnitude of crude oil was being stolen under the previous government which adversely affected the revenue from the federation account, and the government repeatedly recorded slides in revenue generation.

“The inexplicable theft of crude oil reduced our production capacity to about 600,000 bpd. This led to a serious inability on the part of the Federal Government to raise enough funds to distribute to other tiers of government which further brought down the allocations to our state.

“The June 2014 calamity of stolen oil also gutted the international oil market, and if the law of demand and supply can apply to the oil industry, the consequences of under – supply occasioned by activities of oil thieves which reduced our ability to meet our production quota, coupled with the global fall of oil price, adversely affected our revenue which led to our owing a huge sum of money from June 2014 to 2016.”

He further disclosed that his administration had in the face of the prevailing financial challenges, borrowed money and devised a rational way of applying its meager resources in order to maximize results.

Earlier in his speech, Hon. Kehinde Agboola, the leader of the committee who were in the state on an oversight visit to inspect projects jointly funded by the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) and the Osun State Basic Education Board (SUBEB) commended the governor for investing in education which he described as the future of the state.