APC Tasks IG, CP of Police To Investigate Osun Govt Plot To Attack Members With Fake Police... • Says Market Administration Is Responsibility of Local Government

The Osun State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has cautioned the state Governor Ademola Adeleke to desist from governing the state outside the provisions of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 as amended, calling the Inspector-General of Police, IGP Kayode Egbetokun, to direct the state Commissioner of Police to investigate the alleged plot of the state government to unleash attacks on few local government officials maintaining orderliness in and around markets in the state with fake and unauthorized policemen.

The Ademola Adeleke government, since February 10, 2025, when the Court of Appeal in Akure reinstated local government executives elected on the platform of the party in 2022, has activated all manners of tricks, including naked and brazen criminality, to discourage resumption of the legitimate officials  to the local government. 

The latest in the government's puerile attempt to maintain its hold on the local government administration is to mobilize Niger Delta militants and hoodlums drawn from other parts of the South-West geo-political zone to disguise in police uniforms to disrupt business activities in markets around the state and turn around to blame the APC for the mayhem. 

The plot also includes infringing bodily injuries on officials of the local government giving leadership in the markets in the state.

Even though our local government executives have on many occasions stated their resolve to suspend collection of taxes and levies in the markets to give a lease of life to traders who over two years have been extorted by the miscreants recruited by the state government in the name of generating IGR, the Adeleke government continues to misinform the public as to the good intention of our reinstated chairmen and councillors.

It is unfortunate that Governor Adeleke and his cohorts have refused to come to terms with the fact that in the eyes of the law today, the reinstated APC executive chairmen and councillors are legally in charge of the administration of the local government across the state under which effective supervision of all the markets falls.

By virtue of the Court of Appeal judgement of the 10th of February, 2025, the said chairmen and councillors cannot be said to be performing illegal duties by superintending the markets which fall within the purview of their schedule as allowed by the Constitution.

One wonders why Governor Adeleke is afraid of approaching the Supreme Court if he is angry that the Court of Appeal backed the elected chairmen to return to their office to exercise the mandate given to them by the electorate in October 2022. The governor should act decently and honourably, rather than knocking his head on the wall, pacing maniacally like a bull in a china shop.

We invite the Inspector-General of Police and the Commissioner of Police in the state to caution Governor Adeleke and other troublers of peace, reminding them that no section of Nigeria's  Constitution grants the state the power to oversee the affairs of  the markets in their domains.

We resolve that the political instability which Governor Adeleke has courted in recent time, and which his faction of the Nigeria Union of Local Government Employees (NULGE) has been conscripted to energize, would be given to him in full dosage if he decides to prevent the recognized, lawfully elected and reinstated local government council chairmen from performing their constitutional duties.

e-SIGNED:

Mogaji KOLA OLABISI,            Osun State APC Director of Media and Information.