*As Oyo politician says payoff deal for sacked chairmen is criminal
By Lai Mahmood
The Gubernatorial Candidate of Alliance for Democracy (AD) in Oyo State during the March 9, 2019 governorship election, Mr Oyedele Hakeem Alao, has told Governor Seyi Makinde of the state that government is not run on deceit.
This was contained in a statement made available to newsmen by his media office in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital.
Alao’s reaction was coming on the heels of issue generated by N3,000 allegedly being levied on the students of Queen’s School, Apata, Ibadan, by the authorities of the school, which was making the round about two months ago in the state.
The politician was of the opinion that there was nothing to fuse about if the levy was a PTA arrangement as there was always PTA involvement in the running of schools even in the days of the most brilliant governors in the state, and more so where there were shortages in manpower and other needs.
In his words, Alao stated, “Recently, the administration of Engr Seyi Makinde had a sort of fits in the education sector where the principal of Queen’s School, Apata, Ibadan, was accused of re-levying on the students of the school the Seyi Makinde-abrogated N3,000 per year fee levied by the immediate past administration, a practice, our investigation reveals, also takes place in other schools.
“From the time immemorial, our governor should remember that there are always PTA teachers, even in the days of the “most brilliant” governors and when he was a pupil at Bishop Philip’s Academy, Iwo Road, Ibadan. And in an attempt to show that he is a populist and almighty governor, he should not pretend to have what is not available. Government is not run on deceit!”
In the statement, Alao also queried why Governor Makinde swiftly redeployed the former Commissioner for Education in the state, Professor Daud Kehinde Sangodoyin, to Ministry of Establishment, Training and Poverty Alleviation, in the midst of the crisis rocking the Queen’s School at that time, emphasizing that the levy by Queen’s School “was a PTA arrangement and was to cushion the negative effects of shortage of teachers, lack of facilities and adequate funds in the state’s education system.”
Describing the redeployment of the commissioner as suspicious, Alao maintained that, “As a government proving to the world that it is honest, transparent and populist, Engr Makinde would do well and wash himself clean of any suspicion if he could open up and tell the public and our people what really transpired between the Botswana university professor and himself that he moved him away, in an emergency meeting, from the education ministry less than seven months after their inauguration.”
Reacting to the ongoing recruitment and the inauguration of motor parks management system by the state government, Alao said, “it is praise-worthy for the present government in the state to decide to offer our people employment. However, it appears that from conception to the point of hatching, making it public, also to the point of implementation, the policy has not been well thought out considering the approach and methods adopted so far in the recruitment exercise.
“Hard copy application forms by a state government in this century? And worse still, the submitted application forms were being collected by hands and stuffed in Ghana-Must-Go polythene bags at the TESCOM Ibadan Office car park, without any tracking system. As wide as Engr Makinde has traversed the globe, even if he had put a square peg in a round hole in his administration, and also as young as he is, such application and recruitment process is not expected under his watch as governor of Oyo State. This method is crude and would encourage bribery, corruption and nepotism which would mar the entire exercise in the end. It would be difficult to ensure fairness the way this recruitment is being conducted!
“We still wonder how the government of Engr Makinde would cope with the wage bill on the neck of this state government with the employment of almost or over 10,000 staff, teaching and non-teaching, into the civil service of Oyo State. Or the present state government thought that the revenue from the motor parks would be enough to foot the bills and wages before it?”
Alao, however, concluded that, “We are aware a lot of underhand deals are ongoing in the state’s education sector and at the right time Team OHA would beam light on the sector under Engr Seyi Makinde.”
Regarding the newly introduced motor parks management system (PMS) in the state, the AD chieftain said it was a good arrangement “but it was not well thought out and delivered.
“Apart from the fact that park construction, management and operations is a constitutional duty of the local government housed under Fourth Schedule, 1 (f) of the 1999 Constitution, it has been clear that the state government was all out to compensate a faction of the state’s NURTW and this has not been fair enough for a government portraying itself as honest and sincere.”
Speaking further on this subject, Alao asserted that “Any public officer, career officer, elected or appointed, saying that local governments are holding motor parks ‘in trust for the state government’, just as the Chief Press Secretary to Governor Makinde, Mr Taiwo Adisa and/or Commissioner for Information, Dr Wasiu Olatunbosun, as maintained in their different radio interviews, was and is nothing but a lie, an encroachment and an attempt to usurp the power of that tier of government.
“PMS as constituted across the state now has never laid to rest and will never lay to rest the likely unrest, violence and chaos associated with the leadership of NURTW in the state.”
In the meantime, the decision by Governor Makinde to pay off the APC sacked local government and LCDAs’ chairmen has also been condemned in strong terms by the AD governorship candidate.
The AD governorship candidate said the payoff out-of-court settlement offer by Governor Makinde was a prodigal’s son approach to lay to rest the protracted local government leadership crisis rocking the state in the last few weeks.
It would be recalled that the two parties involved in the impasse, the APC sacked ALGON and the Oyo State Government through their counsels had approached the court that they would like to settle out of court which eventually ended in a deadlock last week due to selfish positions by both parties.
Alao said that it would be senseless, suicidal, criminal and shortchanging the people if Governor Makinde would pay close to N7bn to all the chairmen and other functionaries who did not perform their duties and at the same time the governor would still pay the caretaker chairmen he just inaugurated.
Alao, therefore, asked, “How can a government promising to fight corruption and has established an anti-graft commission be coming with a position to pay off the sacked ALGON chairmen for the official duties they did not carry out, particularly when the state’s IGR has not really picked up and our governor is not going to pay from his private pocket or his company’s account?
“The decision to pay off, which has come up before the botched out-of-court settlement meeting and this government has once denied, gives the state government away as bribing these chairmen to have its cronies at the grassroots at all cost.
“In the first instance, why the out-of-court settlement by the Oyo State Government when it knew it would not allow these chairmen to serve and conclude their tenure?
“Our governor should realize that he is dealing with intelligent people and should stop childish toying with the destinies and fate of over five million residents of Oyo State!
“Why is this government deceiving the people or itself when, in actual fact, all the so-called appointed caretaker chairmen, till date, have no operational guidelines to effectively operate with and cannot append their signatures to any official documents?
“Why not allow justice to take its course if the present government under Engr Makinde would stick to its earlier and extant position that these APC men were not democratically or properly elected?
Alao, however, appealed to Engr Makinde “not to use his office and power as the governor of the state to frustrate or pervert justice in this matter. He that claims equity must come with clean hands!”
