The All Progressives Congress(APC) in Osun State on Monday blamed Governor Ademola Adeleke for the continued seizure of local government allocation.
It also accused him of using the leadership of National Union of Local Government Employees (NULGE) to ground the running of the councils.
The Nation recalls that there is crisis over control of local governments in Osun State, fuelled by disputes between All Progressives Congress (APC) and Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) over conflicting court rulings, which stalled governance at the grassroots level leading to the withholding of allocations since February 2025.
The APC in a statement by its Director of Media and Information, Chief Kola Olabisi, cautioned Adeleke to stop misinforming the public about the authentic reason the federal allocations have not been accessed by the local government council areas.
It stated that the Court of Appeal verdict of February 10, 2025 reinstated the October 2022 APC LGA chairmen and councilors.
The party wondered: “Why is it that Governor Adeleke is not bold enough to tell the unsuspecting members of the public that he is the one who has been working in cahoot with the leadership of the state chapter of the NULGE to withdraw the services of the council workers in a sympathy protest since then?
“What could be the rationale behind a state chief executive sponsoring a strike of the council workers against his own government for a selfish reason when it is known to all and sundry that such a protest would affect the people negatively at the grassroots level?”
The party said stakeholders in the Osun project within and outside the State should impress it on Adeleke that it is only an act of wickedness and lack of empathy on the part of the Governor that could make him imbibe such unpopular and anti-democratic route.
The party added: “Must Adeleke be playing politics with everything without thinking of the untoward effects it would have on the people? The sponsored interest groups who have been labelling President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for being responsible for the inability of the council chairmen to access the accumulated local government allocations from the federation account should redirect their plea to the governor to release the NULGE to resume work in all the local government councils.
“It is because the Governor Adeleke-led administration has been the one preventing the NULGE to resume that has resulted to the inability of the traditional rulers in the state to be paid their statutory allowances and salaries.
“With the NULGE staff on the sympathy strike with Governor Adeleke, there are no local government workers who would prepare the salaries of the traditional rulers in the state.If only for the sake of the royal fathers in the state, Governor Adeleke should sheathe his sword and allow the NULGE to call off their sympathy strike.”
Efforts to get reaction from Adeleke’s spokesperson Olawale Rasheed were abortive.
He didn’t get Adeleke’s reaction across to newsmen as promised as of the time of filing this report.
