Osun APC Hits Adeleke Over Alleged Tenure Extension Of Accountant-General

PRESS STATEMENT. (FEBRUARY 27TH, 2024).

OSUN APC TO ADELEKE ON ILLEGAL TENURE EXTENSION OF ACCOUNTANT-GENERAL ALABI:

*Your Policy Is Anti Civil Servants*

…STOP RUNNING YOUR GOVT WITH DECEIT, SUBTERFUGE

The state chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has accused Governor Ademola Adeleke of engaging in subterfuge, chicaneries and illegalities to run his administration.

The party, is reacting to the controversial extension of the statutory tenure of the state Accountant-General, Mr Rasheed Olalere Alabi, contrary to the Public Service Rules (PSR).

The AG, who is in the eye of the storm was appointed by former Governor Gboyega Oyetola(now Minister of Marine and Blue Economy), on May 21st, 2022, and he is due for retirement on March 24th, 2024 when he will be attaining the mandatory retirement age of 60 years.

The worried civil servants who felt cheated and robbed with the extension of the years of service of Alabi by Governor Adeleke against the provisions of the Public Service Rules, were sighted discussing in hush tones at the state government secretariat, Abere, Osun State, on Monday, silently questioning the motive and justification for the development.

It would be recalled that in a similar manner recently, Governor Adeleke, against the complaints from the civil servants’ quarters and discerning minds in the society, granted an indefinite elongation of service to the state Head of Service, Mr Leye Aina, despite the fact that the HoS had attained the mandatory retirement age of 60 years. He was given three years extension.

In his remark on the development, the Osun State chairman of the APC, Sooko Tajudeen Lawal, in a statement issued by the party’s Director of Media and Information, Chief Kola Olabisi, today, stated that it was worrisome that Adeleke has been running his administration by impulse rather than by the provisions of regulations and laws.

Lawal asked the civil servants if they needed to dissipate their energy on frivolities before they came to the terms with a submission that Governor Adeleke is their number one enemy in the state.

The state APC chairman explained that the aspiration of any civil servant is to get to the pinnacle of his career which the illegal retention of the state Accountant-General and the Head of Service by Governor Adeleke has bungled.

He queried why Adeleke is riding rough shod on the civil servants with his inhuman policies by engaging in skullduggery and jiggery-pokery to drive his government.

Lawal pointedly challenged Adeleke that if he had ever worked in his life and not a perpetual dependant in his 60 years plus on earth, he would have known the gravity of the injustice he is doing to the state government workforce in the state with his wicked and nefarious policy of tenure extension.

The APC chairman further observed that the mantra of Governor Adeleke being civil servant-friendly is a ruse designed to confuse and deceive the civil servants as no worker-friendly governor will impede their career progression with utter impunity.

“Are Governor Adeleke and his handlers saying that there are no other qualified officers who could replace the state Accountant-General upon his retirement?

“If not that fraudulent activities in the government are the inseparable binding factors between Governor Adeleke and the embattled Accountant-General, there is no justifiable reason under the sun why Alabi should not abide by the PSR and bow out of service honourably when he will attain the mandatory retirement age on March 14th, 2024”, Lawal added.

In his words: “Does it not occur to the puppet Governor Adeleke that if the top is blocked, no movement of any kind can happen to the bottom and the middle?

“Those who are thinking for this government, a government that has arrested the development of the state and bringing it back by two decades, should cover their faces in shame as history, definitely, will not be kind to them”, Lawal posited.

The Osun State APC chairman wondered why Governor Adeleke has decided to jettison the PSR 020908 which stipulates the mandatory retirement age of the civil servants as attainment of 60 years of age or 35 years in the service as the case may be with the exemption of judicial officers and members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, among others.

e-SIGNED:

Sooko TAJUDEEN LAWAL, Chairman, Osun State APC