..APC is mischievous – Adeleke’s Aide
By Olalekan Ola
The Osun State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has sympathised with the government workers and the pensioners in the state over the disreputable and shoddy conduct of the Governor Ademola Adeleke-led administration in handling the ongoing staff audit exercise which has subsequently brought opprobrium and reproach to the highly-esteemed civil servants and other serving and retired public workers in the state.
Sooko Tajudeen Lawal, in a statement by the Director of Media and Information, Chief Kola Olabisi, said credible information has it that the staff audit exercise which ideally should be held without crisis suddenly and spontaneously erupted in cataclysm at the Centre for Arts, Black Culture and International Understanding, Abere, Osun State, yesterday as the falcon could not hear the falconer at the venue again.
Lawal noted that it was learnt that the distraught Osun State workers queried the genuine motive for the exercise by Governor Adeleke. The poor handling of the exercise was the main reason that engendered the crisis that put a spanner into the wheel of the continuation of the exercise.
The statement reads: “It was gathered that lack of respect for some of the top civil servants in the state by the officials of the consulting firm that has been handling the exercise was another reason why the government workers revolted against the exercise.
“The officials of the consulting firm were said to have openly insulted the state Head of Service; the Permanent Secretary of the Osun State Health Management Board; the Permanent Secretary of Human Capacity Ministry; a medical doctor with the state management board, whom the female head of the consultants told to define Chemistry, among other disenchanted civil servants.
“It was also reliably gathered that the head of the consultants even asked what some of the civil servants were still doing in the service; that they looked older than the ages they declared with a threat to send some of the civil servants packing”.
He said the medical doctor who was asked to define Chemistry was said to have caused a sensation by telling the consultant to go and ask Goggle for the definition as he could not know the basis for asking him such a question when he was not called for a job interview.
It was by this time that the issue degenerated into a crisis which resulted into the singing of a solidarity song by the labour in the state and the labour directive to the consultants to vacate the venue immediately.
In his appraisal of the development, the state chairman added that the unsavoury turn of the event at the ongoing staff audit exercise was an indication that Governor Adeleke has recorded another usual failure in his about seven month-old administration.
Lawal observed that if a state governor could not successfully conduct a common staff audit exercise, he wondered what else he would be able to do correctly.
The state APC chairman explained that the ongoing staff audit exercise was bungled in Osun State because the man at the apex of the government is bereft of the natural endowments required to excel in the office as a governor.
He stated that it was the highest level of insolence, incivility and impertinence for Adeleke to have brought into the state an imperious, haughty and pompous operator of a consulting firm who thinks she could hide under the guise of being the relation of one of the governor’s wives and be heaping insults on top level civil servants in the state.
His words: “If not that it is the tail that is literarily wagging the dog in the current bizarre political arrangement in the state, it would not be out of place to inquire from ‘Madam Consultant’ what moral or educational justification she has to be bringing the civil servants in the state, irrespective of status, to disrepute and odium?
“Successive events at the corridor of power in Osun State from November 27, 2022 to date are pointers to the fact that Governor Adeleke has nothing to offer the state but he is only interested in the glamour of the office of the governor at the expense of the improved fortune of the state.
“A gentleman’s bond is his word. Has Governor Adeleke forgotten that he promised to pay all the accumulated pensions, gratuities and salaries of pensioners and active workers within six months of his administration during the governorship campaign?
“Is Governor Adeleke operating a completely different calendar for him not to know that he has spent over six months in the office without fulfilling his pledge to the pensioners and the active government workers?
“It will now occur to the active government workers and the pensioners that they have fallen victims of a political swindler who only deceived them in order to fraudulently harvest their votes.
“There is no need for Governor Adeleke to be evading the state pensioners who had made fruitless efforts to see him at his Ede Country home which now doubles as the Osun Government House.
“It is worthwhile to make a remark that with the failed and promised attitude of Governor Adeleke to the request of the active government workers and the pensioners, the immediate-past Governor Gboyega Oyetola has been vindicated as it’s on record that the former governor would never promise what he wouldn’t be able to provide or achieve”, Lawal recalled.
Reacting, the Special Assistant on Media Monitoring to Governor Ademola Adeleke, Mr Akintunde Sherif, described the APC’s allegation against the state Governor as mischievous and unfounded, saying APC enjoys to be triumphed under non-existence controversy, adding that the party is crying more than the bereaved.
“I have from the authority that the state labour unions are not in any way at war with the state government. They have keyed into this idea of staff auditing. The Governor ordered the Head of Service to carry along the labour unions on the ongoing staff auditing. The unions, with the state government agreed that the auditing was necessary.
“The labour unions till today has not changed its position, given their nod to the auditing procedures. The idea of the auditing exercise is not met to witch-hunt or downsize workers in the state but we want to know the extent of our state workforce and gostworkers, who have died or relocated from their desk.
“We want to know the actual number of the workforce and the outstanding vacancy will go o our job seekers in the town”, he said.
He noted that workers have issues/complaints with the leader of the consultant firm when the exercise was on going. The Governor is a listening person, a responsible leader who cannot leave workers in darkness.
“What the workers are clamouring for is the decentralization of the exercise. The number of workers coming to the venue of the exercise is so large that it is becoming inconvenience and uncomfortable for workers in the state.
“The state government has met with the representatives of the workers’ unions and the consultant and ordered the consultant to decentralize the exercise. He also directed the consultant to meet with the workers and agreed on reasonable time-table for ease of workers.
“The state government has addressed the complaints of the workers and favourable treatment has been given to the workers because the Governor holds the workers in high esteem. The APC is being mischievous and the allegation against the Governor is unfounded. This has shown that Governor Ademola Adeleke is a worker friendly Governor”, Akintunde concluded
