WHEREAS since 1998, the Peoples Democratic Party in Osun state have, god-knows-why, been unfortunate with their choice of leaders, the current set of leaders, represented by Senator Ademola Adeleke, an effigy clad with the robe of a state governor; and Sunday Bisiriyu, a vexatious nuisance who goes around with the title of a state party chairman, have been the most miserable.
The combination of these grown-up prats is the ones calling the shots in the state, and, expectedly, has taken the state back to the stone-age, to the life outside society described by Thomas Hobbes as life lived in continual and palpable fear and danger of death—solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
In Nigeria of today, nobody jostles the title of the Most Incompetent Governor with Senator Adeleke. Under him, people of the state groan and struggle to breathe on account of his non-challant attitude to serious state affairs. This is the first time in the history of the state that a government would dip its hand in the public treasury without supplementary budget. Adeleke conducts state business shoddily, carelessly, without fear of God and fear of the people whose mandate he claims to be exercising.
Many of the projects being undertaken by his administration are not captured in the 2023 budget, yet the figure-head governor is reluctant to present a supplementary budget to the state house of assembly, as it is traditional and constitutional. Even where such projects are captured in the running budget, the government flouts the procurement law with reckless abandon. The classical example of these projects with kwashiorkored procurement process is that of Akoda-Cottage Junction-Oke Gada-Ido Osun- Ofatedo. This named road, approved in May, is ongoing but on September 25, the state government went to town with tender notice advertisement for the same project! It is disheartening that a governor who mouths accountability and rule of law and due process is enmeshed in this steeped and blatant criminality.
The implication of this rascality is that it would hurt the decent credit score of the state earned during the last administration of Adegboyega Oyetola. The purpose of creating a budget is to track your financial flows. When a government does not stick to a budget, as we currently have it in Osun state, there is a risk of spending without limit, thus running the state into financial abyss. Governor Adeleke is spending Osun money illegally. And the truth is that he risks going to jail for fraud when he is successfully prosecuted after leaving office.
Again, the shocking and awful handling of the N2b FG palliative fund calls to question the integrity of Governor Adeleke and his perilous party. For two months now that the payment was received, Adeleke has been doing a hide-and-seek with the fund, necessitating well-meaning citizens of the state to call him out to account for the money. Unfortunately, the Ipade Imole, his civic engagement programme, touted to address the concern, that Adeleke had diverted the relief fund, raised by the main opposition party, ended without the moral-lacking governor outlining his plan on it. The Ipade Imole talk-show was a tale told by an idiot, according to Shakespeare, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing—as for close to five hours that the talkative hippopotamus held the microphone at Aurora event centre, he only rambled, growled like an hypertensive parrot. He could not tell the delegates present, in specific term, how much was going for what. This is pathetic given that other governors who received similar money have channeled it to fund programmes designed to truly cushion the effect of fuel subsidy removal for which it is meant.
In Benue for instance, the responsible APC governor, Hyacinth Alia, announced a couple of days ago the acquisition of 100 buses to be allocated to Benue Links, the state-owned transportation company. He equally disclosed the plan of his government to provide financial support of N50,000 to market women across the state with the aim to upscale their small trading businesses. This and other pallitiaves are what governors with human-face are doing all over the country. But in Osun, everything is in limbo and stand-still. And when the citizens query the government to act true to its avowal, some nincompoops and political imbeciles like Sunday Bisiriyu, the inferiority-complexed PDP Chairman would unleash their media rotweillers to go after credible people who have called their idle and ruined government to question. The drunken Sunday, with high appetite for sleeping around Ilesa hotels with cheap prostitutes, reasons that sponsoring media war against his party’s imaginary adversaries, would bully people to submission. Never! The drunkard with the diabetic body should know that no vacuous name-calling would discourage the All Progresives Congress and other good citizens from wiping into line Governor Adeleke and his fellowship of castrated Aki-and-Pawpaw. Responsible citizens will continue to school the irresponsible Adeleke to work for the people, and not for his belly and comfort of the economic buccaneers around him.
