Osun APC Carpets Adeleke Over Alleged Failure To Pay Salary Arrears As Pledged

The Osun State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has sympathized with the state government workers over the failure of the state Governor Ademola Adeleke to pay their March salaries as and when due and combine same with the payment of arrears of promotions.

It would be recalled that Adeleke, last week, had given the readiness of his administration to pay the arrears of promotions together with the March salaries as the cause of the delay in the payment of the March salaries of the government workers in the state.

The state government who hinted that all efforts were in top gear to pay both the March salaries and the arrears of promotions latest on Monday failed woefully to redeem its pledge as the expectant government workers had their hope dashed.

To the consternation of the government workers, the alerts for the payment of their old salaries started creeping in in the early hours of Tuesday without the promised promotions arrears.

This delay in the payment of salaries and the outright refusal of Adeleke to honour his pledge on the payment of promotion arrears have become a very big issue in the state as it is on record that throughout the four-year tenure of former Governor Gboyega Oyetola’s administration, payment of salaries occupied a first-line charge priority attention.

It was observed that the government workers were pained over the disappointment of the bearly four-month-old administration of Governor Adeleke because he had made it his campaign promise that the payment of their salaries would not exceed the 26th of any particular month.

In his remark on the unsavoury development, the state acting chairman of the APC, Sooko Tajudeen Lawal, in a statement issued by the party’s Director of Media and Information, Chief Kola Olabisi, in Osogbo, the Osun State capital, today, stated that his party has been vindicated on its earlier position on the inability of Adeleke to fulfil his obligation to the government workers.

Lawal who explained that his party foresaw the present predicament of the Adeleke administration but stated that it never knew that it would be so early in coming as it’s pretty difficult for anyone to give what he doesn’t possess.

He disclosed that his party, all along, knew that the Adeleke administration would hit the rock as its driver has the history of money spending and not money making which is manifested in the current financial mess of the state.

In Lawal’s words: “We sympathize with the entire inhabitants of the state in general and the government workers in particular over their traumatic experience in the payment of their March salaries and absolute denial of their promotion arrears as earlier promised them by Governor Adeleke.

“I am moved to tears when I thought of those of you who had banked your hope of the payment of the school fees of your children in various schools on the failed largesse promised you by this government in transit.

“How about some of you who are nursing one ailment or the other and have been relying on the scuttled promotion arrears which cannot be said with the air of finality whether it would ever be paid?

“When we sounded a note of warning concerning the issue at stake few days ago, some political jobbers would not allow us to breathe with an unsubstantiated allegation that we were playing a dirty politics with the Adeleke administration’s financial conundrum.

“It is not that we are totally disappointed with the prevailing situation of the financial status in Osun State as no miracle can be expected from someone who has no history of doing any business in his life except his absolute dependence on hand-out and stipend from his big brother which qualifies him for being an irredeemable sluggard.

“We are happy that we have been vindicated in our estimation that Adeleke is not endowed with the required qualities to successfully paddle the canoe of the administration of this state to stardom.

“The blowing whirlwind has exposed the anus of the proverbial fowl which makes its coverage an impossible Utopia.

“A financial expert is different from a reckless spender while it is a leader who makes money that he spends that is qualified to be called a performer and not someone who stumbles on the money that he didn’t work for and squandered same without recourse for probity and accountability.

“I will implore the people of the state to be prayerful that the reverse gear in which the administration of the state is currently being thrown into would not be long before it is made to say bye bye to it.

“Once again, it will not be an exaggeration to state that former Governor Oyetola needs to be commended over his financial wizardry when he was in the saddle which fits perfectly into an axiom that ‘the head of an elephant is not a worthy load for a toddler’ and that ‘governance is not a tea party'”, Lawal stated.