A sociopolitical group, Concern Citizens of Osun has condemned the appointment of Engr. Adesina Babatunde Oyetola by Governor Ademola Adeleke as the new general manager of the Osun Public Procurement Agency.
The group, in a statement signed by its the Chairman Mr Akintunde Agboola described the appointment as disrespect for the constitution by the present administration.
The statement read: :Recently, On January 17, 2023, the administration of Governor Ademola Adeleke approved the appointment of one Engr. Adesina Babatunde Oyetola. a career civil Servant as the new general manager of the Osun Public Procurement Agency in total disregard and disrespect for the law guiding the establishment and operation of Osun public procurement Agency. This is even as the Government is silent on the fate of the current GM who has a fixed tenure of 4 years as stipulated by the Law.
According to the Public Procurement Amendment Law, 2019, Section 13(1) of the principal law states that “There shall be appointed for the agency a general manager outside the mainstream of civil service who shall also function as the secretary of the board, who shall be appointed by the governor subject to the confirmation of the House of Assembly.”
Also, in Section 13(4), it states that “without prejudice to the provisions of sub-section (3) of this section, the General Manager/Secretary of the Board may be removed from office at the instance of the Governor subject to the approval of the House of Assembly on the grounds of misconduct, financial impropriety, fraud, and manifest incompetence.”
In respect to the above sections of the law as amended, the current administration has failed in appointing the general manager without due process and with total disrespect to the rule law.
The newly appointed GM of the agency is a career officer in the civil service, which is a total contradiction to the law establishing the agency.
Incidentally, Engineer Adesina Babatunde Oyetola is a sit-tight civil servant in the Osun Public Procurement Agency for the past 15 years. The previous administration appointed a general manager in 2019, which was confirmed by the State House of Assembly and in accordance with the Public Procurement Law as amended.
Apart from the fact that the office of the GM for Public Procurement is for non-career officers, the agency before 2019 had an annual income of less than N300,000 per year until it hired a general manager, who brought transformative changes and raised the annual income to over N14 million naira in less than 2 years. He ensured everyone got their job done without restrictions as required by law.
The illegally removed GM’s rich and varied experience make him introduced innovative ideas that curb a lot of shenanigans going on in the agency, which hitherto has been the hotpot before 2019.
The introduction of e-procurement is a novel idea that removes human intervention from the entire procurement process, something that does not been in existence before 2019 because it is an avenue to rip off agencies and contractors. Therefore, with the idea of E-procurement, all sorts of desperations and corruption has been cut off entirely.
Before the arrival of the GM in 2019, the Director of Technical solely and single-handedly supervises registration, renewal, payment, tendering, and bidding in the public service. Every contractor in Osun can validate these assertions. Your file won’t pass if you don’t come to see him.
The appointment of a civil servant as the new GM of Osun Public Procurement which is against the law is a testament to the public’s opinion about the seriousness of the present administration and a known fact to the anyhow ways of PDP.
For a man who has managed to make sure he never got posted out of that agency for the last 15 years. If the new government wants sanity and improvement over the procurement process, The person who has to be moved completely away from that agency. Appointing him is not only a gross violation of the existing rule governing the operation of the Agency but also a throwback into Egypt for the Agency.
With this appointment approved by Governor Adeleke, Osun State stand to lose all the grants it has earned on procurement compliance since 2019 ( in excess of $6mUSD) due to the reversal of the principal procurement law, the first of which is the appointment of a career Civil Servant as GM/Chief Executive Officer of the Agency, Something the Governor is doing with the appointment of Engr Oyetola.
