The battle for the soul of Osun State has continued to rage unabated, as the deadline draws near even though we still have nearly two years to go. In the past two years, there has been tension between the two major political parties, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), currently ruling the state, and the All Progressives Congress (APC), the major opposition. seems to escalate by the day pointing to the high interest at stake.
For the past two years, it has been a serious battle of wits, as if the state is under heavy political siege, which no one could comprehend. The two parties have been fighting each other with great venoms and using whatever weapons are at hand to ensure that they win the war against each other.
Since every action or movement has been regarded as a weapon or instrument of war, the APC has now declared that the recent, probes instituted by the PDP government of Governor Ademola Adeleke, against his immediate predecessor, Mr. Gboyega Oyetola, are political weapons to demolish the party and the former governor, ahead of the coming governorship election.
With the permutations going on, and if all things are equal, there is the likelihood of both Adeleke and Oyetola, becoming main contenders again in the next election, as both of them have shown interest to still want to run.
If this this happens, it would be the third time, that both of them would wrestle for the first chair in Osun, the State of the Living Spring. The first time was in 2018, which brought Oyetola into power in what was described as a controversial election, which the PDP and Adeleke claimed was a daylight robbery, with the flimsy re-run in units of some local governments of the state, which then truncated the earlier victory of Adeleke, in the inconclusive election.
The second was in 2022, which saw Adeleke and PDP fighting back to defeat Oyetola and APC hands down.
Since the last election that brought Adeleke into power, the APC and the PDP have been at each other’s throats, and their principals too, have been in frosty relationships, avoiding each other like plagues.
That is why the APC is now condemning the latest probes of Oyetola, which it described as vendetta and witch-hunting.
But the Chairman of the latest committee probing the immediate past administration of Oyetola, who is the Secretary to the State Government, Hon. Teslim Igbalaye, defended the action of the government, saying it was not meant to discredit or witch-hunt anyone. To him, the committee is meant to recover the state assets carted away by officials of the immediate past government.
According to Hon. Igbalaye , the committee is discharging its duties according to the dictate of the law, as “the exercise is not to witch hunt the opposition, but rather, to repossess the assets of the state and due diligence would be strictly followed in doing so”
“It was imperative for the committee to go through due process after the inauguration. Government properties like vehicles, buildings, which were illegally possessed must be returned to the Osun state Government immediately”
He pointed out that his committee would also adhered to the recommendations of a Task Force set up on the matter, which among other things, called for due diligence, with a view to ascertaining vehicles/ assets that were lawfully permissible to be taken back from those illegally taken away;
He argued that the governor had the prerogative power to allow any political appointee to go home with his/her official vehicle, having served for at least a period of two (2) years and paying some amount of money into the coffers of the government, and if the vehicle was less than four (4) years old, the appointee would pay 10% of the residual value of such official vehicles , but faulted the approval granted and the letter of permission written by the immediate past Head of Service, directing political appointees of the immediate past administration to go home with the official vehicles allocated to them, which according to him was, “however, illegal.”
He, therefore, said that “Consequently, all government assets/ vehicles that are hitherto in the possession of the political appointees of the immediate past administration, which are not captured in the express provisions as stipulated by laws guiding them, are deemed to have been illegally carted away, and such must be returned to the Osun State Government immediately.”
Hon. Igbalaye said the Task Force in carrying out its assignments and its recommendations, which his committee would examine and act upon, followed due process, saying, members consisted of legal and security representatives, who are mandated to make sure that operations are carried out in respect to the rule of law.
“We have legal and security representatives. They are on this committee to make sure that the rule of law takes preeminence”, he maintained.
Although the State SSG spoke in the tone, which meant that the action of the government was in good faith, those affected in the Oyetola’s government saw it as actions to disparage both the APC and former governor, ahead of the next election, to create and paint them in bad light in the eyes of the people of the state.
Some of them further argued that if Igbalaye’s argument that the probe exercise was according to the law and not meant to witch-hunt anyone, they pointed out that the statement of the Chief Press Secretary to Governor Adeleke , Olawale Rasheed, on the probes instituted by Adeleke, concerning the indictment of Oyetola’s men betrayed the statement of Igbalaye on his committee’s intention.
Olawale Rasheed, had during a Radio programme in Osogbo, alerted the people of the state to expect a bombshell from the committee probing contract awards by Oyetola.
The spokesperson for Gov. Adeleke, was not in anyway sober about his indictment of top officials of the former administration on contract award, saying, the public should expect bombshells from the Kolapo Alimi led White paper Implementation Committee.
Rasheed, who was reacting to the APC accusation of the Adeleke’s Chief of Staff, argued that his boss’s Chief of Staff neither violated the law nor breached ethical code, but lampooned the APC, of trying to cover its misdeeds in government and to divert the attention of the people from the bad governance of Oyetola, whose many officials under him took contracts for companies on which they still serve as directors, while in government.
“Osun people will be shocked by the time the White Paper Implementation Committee rolled out the names of Commissioners, Special Advisers and top officials of the Oyetola administration, who breached the procurement laws and violated various ethical questions.”
Rasheed said the indicted officials not only got the jobs for the companies on which they were directors, but also participated in the decision making process for the award of the jobs.
Comparing the issues of the two scenarios, Rasheed argued that the Chief of Staff to Adeleke, resigned from the alleged company before he assumed office as Chief of Staff and was never part of the Contract decision making process of TETFUND and Osun State University, which shows that he complied with both legal and ethical preconditions as required by the Procurement laws.
He said, in the case of the APC, their officials remained as directors while serving the state, awarded the contracts to themselves and also sat at meetings, where contract award decisions were taken.
He said initially, Adeleke was not interested in probing past administrations because of the distraction it would bring to delivering good governance, but the persistence of the opposition in promoting fake news placed a responsibility on the state government to open the can of worms on how the former administration looted the treasury through abuse of procurement laws.
“We have decided to let the cat out of the bag by letting the public read what happened in the various contracts, awarded under the former administration”.
However, the APC has not taken the probe issue lightly, as the Chairman of the party in the State, Sooko Tajudeen Lawal, said that Adeleke was only chasing shadows.
Gov. Adeleke, before the Igbalaye’s panel, had instituted an eight-man panel to implement the report and the white paper of the committee that reviewed contracts awarded by the administration of Oyetola. Adeleke, who got into office on November 27 2022, set up the contract review panel as one of his executive orders.
With the terms of the reference of the panel and subsequent white papers on its report, it means that any of Oyetola’s men found culpable would face prosecution and that was probably, why the Chief Press Secretary to Adeleke, Rasheed, was up-beat that the people of Osun State would be shocked when the white paper on all the panels probing Oyetola are in the public domain.
The state chairman of the APC, Tajudeen Lawal, who is bitter about the actions of Adeleke, and the utterances of his aides, since he got into office against the APC and Oyetola, described the setting up of the implementation committee as a ploy to cover up mismanagement by the present administration uncovered by the opposition party.
Lawal said it was “funny that an administration that awarded road/flyover contract to the serving deputy speaker of the state House of Assembly without following the due process would now suddenly consider the setting up of an implementation panel of the White Paper on the Contract Review Committee?
“We wondered why was it a day after our party accused Governor Adeleke of awarding state road/flyover contracts to his brother and nephew that he (Adeleke) suddenly considered it expedient to set up an implementation committee.
“Adeleke should thread softly as Osun people are now wiser and knowledgeable enough to read the true motive of his action meant to unjustifiably victimize the opposition for having the effrontery to catalog the series of frauds his government is perpetrating against the state in the name of prosecution of legacy projects.”
Those watching political events in Osun State since the past six years when the APC and the PDP have been at loggerheads say there is no doubt and gainsaying that the parties will continue to engage in a frosty unending battle for relevance, power, and campaign of calumny against each other for a long time to come.
According to a public affairs analyst and former Press Secretary to the former Governor Olunloyo of Oyo State, Elder Moses Olorode, “what is happening in Osun State is not peculiar to that State alone, but across the country and this has been hindering continuity of good projects in virtually all the states of Nigeria.”
He told Business Hallmark that he was moved by the presentation of former Minister Professor. Okonjo Iweala at the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) conference recently, when he called on politicians in Nigeria to close ranks and give room for continuity of good projects when a new government takes over rather than stopping them in the name of not being in the same political party or a bid to create the impression of saying these are my projects, thereby, jettisoning good ones by the previous administration, which are beneficial to the people.
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