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Governor Rauf Aregbesola of Osun State has been exonerated of any wrongdoing by the House of Assembly which investigated allegations of financial impropriety levelled against him and his deputy, but it appears that his trouble may not be over

|  By Olu Ojewale  |  Aug 24, 2015 @ 01:00 GMT  |

IT was a sort of pyrrhic victory for Governor Rauf Aregbesola of Osun State and Titilayo Laoye-Tomori, his deputy, on Wednesday, August 5. The seven-man committee set up by the state House of Assembly, to investigate the petition written against him by Justice Folahanmi Oloyede, dismissed the judge’s allegations describing them as baseless, more so, because Oloyede refused to appear before the panel in person.

But that notwithstanding, the governor and his deputy are still in the eye of the storm. On Tuesday, August 11, the National Association of Nigerian Students, NANS, threatened to embark on massive protest against the Osun State government for its alleged refusal to negotiate with lecturers in the tertiary institutions owned by the state over non-payment of salaries. The position of NANS was made known in Osogbo in a statement signed Lukman Adekitan, chairman of the NANS Joint Campus Committee. The students said they could not continue to keep silent over the issue which had forced them out of schools for several weeks.

The students want the state government to put in place measures towards ensuring quick reopening of their campuses or else they would proceed on protest march. “The government must immediately start negotiating with the striking lecturers and Osun State Government must show genuine commitment towards funding tertiary education,” the students said.

The state is reputed to be owing six months’ salaries of lecturers and other workers at the Osun State Polytechnic, Iree; Osun State Polytechnic, Esa Oke; College of Education, Ila Orangun, and College of Education, Ilesa.

Having NANS joining the protests march against Aregbesola is no doubt going to inflame the already tense situation in the state. It is also going to send an unpalatable signal to the governor himself, who appears to be somewhat remorseful that he has not been able to fulfill his obligation to workers in the state.

Earlier on Monday, August 10, Yinka Odumakin, national publicity secretary of Afenifere, a pan-Yoruba socio-political organisation, submitted a petition to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, alleging financial recklessness and corruption of Governor Aregbesola. Odumakin submitted the petition on behalf of a group called Osun Stakeholders.

In the petition titled, “Petition against Governor Rauf Aregbesola for financial recklessness, corruption, money laundering and fraudulent application of Osun State’s resources,” the governor was accused of sinking the state into abject poverty.

Odumakin said: “In addition, the state is littered with abandoned projects even though loans were secured by this administration to execute them. Today, our dear state has become the embodiment of lack, poverty, purposelessness, wickedness and insensitivity of political leaders of the highest order in the country.”

According to the petition, Osun has become the poorest state in Nigeria. It stated that families could no longer survive and the people of the state now look up to the EFCC to ensure that the state’s funds were recovered.

The Bureau of Communication and Strategy in the Office of the governor of Osun State on Tuesday, August 11, described the petition as another gimmick.

The bureau said it was part of the ploy to continue to get media attention calling on all discerning Nigerians to “spot the difference between the supposed petition to the EFCC and the one which was submitted by a judge of a high court in Osun which has ended up discrediting the petitioner.” Semiu Okanlawon, director of the bureau, in a statement, said serious-minded Nigerians no longer take Odumakin’s media hype serious.

Only last Sunday, August 9, the governor promised that the issue of non-payment of salaries would soon be resolved. “Debt is a bad thing and I’m being careful with what I do because of the fact that I owe Osun workers. But you will hear a lot from me once I pay the outstanding salaries of our workers between August and September. Then that time I can dance,” Aregbesola said at the 50th birthday ceremony of Najeem Salaam, speaker of the state House of Assembly.

Contrary to allegations, the governor also denied that the state had collected N538 billion from the federation account. “If I had collected N538 billion, Osun would have turned to Dubai,” he said.

What, perhaps, seemed to enrage the governor is that Justice Oloyede, a judge in his state, had written a petition against him and Laoye –Tomori. He said there was no basis for the petition. According to him, the judge had through her petition, demonstrated that she was unfit to be in such an exalted position. He said: “Judges can only be seen and not heard. She (Oloyede) doesn’t have any substance in the judiciary. She lied against me. The journalists should have checked the financial statement of the allocation before writing their stories.”

Besides, contrary to the judge’s allegation that he was always out of the state, the governor said he had never gone on leave since 2010. “I will tell the side of my story bit by bit. I am confident that before the end of the month the period of hard time will smoke off in the state,” he assured.

Aregbesola who is known for dancing, did not do so at the occasion. He jokingly told the social gathering that “a debtor doesn’t deserve to dance.”

Indeed, apart from owing state workers, the dust raised by the petition written by Oloyede promises to take sometimes to settle given the volatility of the political situation in the state. This is more so because the state is being governed by the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, which also has the majority in the House of Assembly.  Hence, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and sympathisers must have believed that the House manipulated the investigation of Aregbesola and Laoye-Tomori in favour of the ruling party.

But the committee of the House while presenting its report in a plenary on Wednesday August 5, said it dismissed the petition because all the allegations could not be substantiated, and that the judge who wrote the petition could not find the courage to come before the panel to present evidence.

The committee, therefore, recommended disciplinary action against the judge by the State Judicial Service Commission. Adegboye Akintunde, chairman of the panel, who presented the report at the plenary sitting of the House of Assembly on Wednesday, August 5, said the allegations of corruption contained in the petition were based on rumours and not facts.

Besides, the panel reported that the petitioner violated the code of conduct of judicial officers which forbade them from coming out public on issues. It stated that Oloyede, being a serving judge in Osun State, was not qualified to forward the petition to the lawmakers, but that the matter was still investigated. This, Salaam said at the plenary was in recognition of the rule of law and freedom of expression in accordance with sections 128 and 129 of the Constitution, which empowered the legislature to investigate any public petition forwarded to the House.

The committee similarly dismissed petitioner’s call for the impeachment of the governor, saying it was not in consonant with the position of the law and pointed at the section 88 of the constitution, which says that the impeachment of the governor and the deputy can only be engineered by one third of the members of the House. Hence, the House ruled that Oloyede had betrayed the oath of her office.

Critics argued that Oloyede had acted emotionally and partisan. And that her decision not to appear before the seven-man panel of the House that investigated her allegations, showed that she had nothing to substantiate her allegations.

However, she was represented by Lanre Ogunlesi, SAN, who told the panel that her client refused to make personal appearance because she was not given a copy of the governor’s reply to her petition.

As if that was not enough, on Monday, August 2, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, asked the judge come to its headquarters in Abuja, to clarify some aspects of her petition. But Oloyede told the anti-graft agency that it should send its officials to interview her in Osogbo, Osun State capital, because she had no money to travel to Abuja.

Justice Oloyede had written a petition on June 9, 2015, to the Osun State House of Assembly in which she accused Aregbesola and Laoye-Tomori of financial mismanagement of the state resources and asked for their impeachment. A copy of the 39-page petition was also forwarded to the EFCC and the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission, ICPC.

The unprecedented petition also caught the attention of legal luminaries such as Itsey Sagay, SAN, who is also a professor of law and Folake Solanke, SAN. In a joint statement by the two senior lawyers, they described Oloyede’s petition as embarrassing and a display of “gross ignorance of the judge regarding the process for the impeachment of governors.”

Apparently disturbed by Oloyede’s petition, they described the judge’s action as reckless descent into the murky waters of partisan politics. Sagay and Solanke said they were disturbed by the apparent silence of the National Judicial Council in the face of gross breaches of Judicial Etiquette and Code of Conduct by Oloyede. They said her action was an open display of indiscipline and that such crass irresponsibility should be punished by the council.

The statement of the duo said in part: “She is in fact a member of the Judiciary, the third arm of government conferred with the responsibility of the interpretation of laws, including the Constitution and the issuing of orders, judgments and sentences.

“It is, therefore, a cause for great embarrassment and shame that a judge of the High Court is ignorant of the fact that she cannot initiate impeachment proceedings against the governor. That petition is an illegal document which should have been disregarded with contempt by the House.”

However, the Civil Societies Coalition for the Emancipation of Osun State, CSCEO, came to the defence of Oloyede. It faulted Sagay and Solanke, describing the joint statement by the two senior lawyers as predetermined and mere opinion made to save their Aregbesola over his financial recklessness and mismanagement. The CSCEO said the duo’s statement was not only in bad taste but also “very unfortunate, anti-masses, ungodly, evil and uncalled for.”

Besides, the group in a statement jointly signed by Adeniyi Sulaiman, chairman, Bukola Idowu, deputy secretary and Theophilus Ayodeji, director of mobilisation, accused the duo of deliberate plan to incite the National Judicial Council, NJC against the embattled judge.

Holding a similar position, the PDP in the state dismissed all the criticisms against Oloyede, saying Sagay and Solanke’s positions on the matter were based on a briefing obtained solely from Aregbesola. The PDP, in a statement signed by Diran Odeyemi, director of publicity and strategy, on Tuesday, August 4, accused the two senior lawyers of speaking the minds of Aregbesola and his friends who allegedly assisted him to siphon public funds in Osun State.

The Osun State chapter of the Conference of Nigeria Political Party, CNPP, in a similar accused Aregbesola and Laoye-Tomori of manipulation and rejected the verdict passed on Justice Oloyede over her petition. In a statement signed by Popoola Olatunji, chairman of the CNPP, and Gabde Adelakun, secretary, the party said on Thursday, August 6, that the seven-member APC House panel’s conclusion on the said matter was undemocratic, devilish, bias, unfortunate, ungodly and anti-people.

“We strongly believe that the courageous and indomitable Justice Oloyede is representing the voice of the voiceless and the oppressed masses of Osun State and this voice cannot be silenced by tyrannical rule of Mr. Aregbesola,” the statement said.

Similarly, Victor Olowogorioye, an indigene of Osun State, said the verdict of the Osun State House of Assembly Panel was not a surprise to him, describing the House committee as “a kangaroo panel.” But he cautioned that what the committee had done would still come back to haunt the House. “What I know is that you cannot throw away the baby along with the bathwater. If you do, it will come back to haunt you. That is my stand.” he said.

But a sympathiser of Aregbesola who refused to give his name, said the governor meant well for the state through his free education policy, which seemed to be draining the pocket of the state because he added feeding of student to the policy. “Osun State governor is spending a lot on feeding of the students every day. I suggest he cuts down on feeding to allow funds to be directed to other things like paying workers’ salaries,” he said.

Indeed, as long as Osun State is still owing its workers and pensioners, it appears that Aregbesola will remain in the eye of the storm, especially with the accusations making the rounds that the governor has been profligacy and economical with the true position of the state earnings.

Just recently, a former Head of Service, HOS, in the state faulted the state of finances as presented by the governor. Olusegun Akinwusi, a former HOS who retired in 2012, after serving in the Aregbesola administration for about two years, said in a statement that the figures released by the governor to members of the state House of Assembly on the position of the economy of our state were not only bogus “but they were criminally deceitful.”

Akinwusi, in a statement titled: “Many lies of a dishonest government” released in Osogbo about two weeks ago, enumerated details of funds allocation from the federation account to the state between November 2010 and December 2014.  He alleged that between November 2010 when Aregbesola assumed power and December of the same year, the total funds from the federation account was N54.2 billion and not N29.9 billion as declared by the governor to Osun State House of Assembly, OSHA.

The retired HOS alleged that Aregbesola declared a sum of N31.6 billion for 2012, but the actual amount of fund received was N47.8billion while in 2013 the state got N44.7 as against a sum of N26.4billion declared by the OSHA.

In 2014, Akinwusi said: “Although there was a missing record of one month, we still had on the strength of the eleven (11) months – N36.7billion, while our governor declared only N19.3billion for the whole year. By the conclusion of the governor we received only N108.3bn all excluding our IGR, as against a total sum of N183.4bn excluding one month the period under review.”

He said the issue of salaries of workers was not devoid of manipulations either. He said the total staff strength of state workforce was below 21,000 because more than one-third of the workforce voluntarily retired in December, 2012.

Akinwusi further alleged: “From grapevine, it is being speculated that since civil servants are no longer allowed to do their statutory duties, that is preparation of salaries, a number of fictitious names had found their way into the payroll of government, even people that have never been to Osun State. The figure of N3.6billion as salaries is spurious and over inflated, I challenge anyone that the best the salary bill could be cannot be more than N2.2billion.

“More importantly, besides the regular monthly allocation from the federation account, the followings also accrued to government coffers, Excess Crude Oil N67.1 billion, Internally Generated Revenue, IGR, N43.6 billion, SURE-P N14.4 billion and SUBEB N13.9 billion.”

The former HOS revealed that there were other interventionist programmes including UNICEF, multinational donations and MDG releases and others in the state.

On the issue of loan, Akinwusi alleged that it had been fraught with deceit and lack of transparency. For example, he said the public was made to believe that Islamic sukuk never attracted any interest, but it had been discovered the state would pay N25.5 billion to service a loan of N11.5billion taken by the Aregbesola regime as from 2020.

The former HOS said he was disenchanted and disappointed by Aregbesola’s style of leadership because the governor had not conducted the state affairs as expected. He said: “Leaders by all standards are supposed to be good role models, mentors and indeed heroes for the younger ones… But when against this norm our leaders are epitomes of deceit, lies and unstable character, I fear what these young ones will learn and copy of their lives.”

No doubt, Akinwusi as a retired civil servant must also be feeling the pressure of the unpaid pension in the state in the past eight months. But now that the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, has approved the federal government bailout for states owing their workers, the ugly episode may soon end.

However, what seems to have further enraged the people in the state is that the governor is perceived to be living in opulence by refusing to dispose of helicopter which he uses to transport himself and aides in and out of the state.

Early in June this year, the PDP advised Aregbesola, to sell the helicopter which he claimed was for security surveillance and stop “wasteful spending” in order to raise money to pay salaries of workers in the state. Besides, Odeyemi, the PDP spokesman, said: “What this administration told us was that the helicopter was to be used for surveillance, but we have since discovered that the machine is only serving the travelling needs of Mr. Aregbesola and his family. This remains one draining pipe that must be blocked.”

In the same vein, the PDP accused the governor of wasting the state’s resources on politics and arming of a group of youth he called “State Boys.”

In addition, Aregbesola is also being accused of using the state funds electioneering campaigns in the governorship race in Ekiti State and the presidential election won by the All Progressive Congress, APC, his political party.

Be that as it may, Aregbesola seems to have been courting controversies since he assumed office many of them leading to street demonstrations and threats.

For instance, parents of children in public primary and secondary schools in Osun State in June, 2014 protested for several days against the controversial education policies of the state government.

The parents who at a point converged on the state secretariat of the Parents Teachers Association, PTA, at the Government Technical College, Osogbo, described the Aregbesola administration as one driven on motor of sheer propaganda. They condemned the common school uniform introduced throughout the state, especially because it was being manufactured and sold by only one company.

Besides the inconvenience of getting the uniform to buy on their own, they also complained about the high cost and poor quality of the material. The parents said they were made to wrongly believe that the uniform would be free as part of the free education policy, when the first batch was distributed for free. However, purchasing another one afterwards cost about N2,000.

Besides, Mayowa Popoola, leader of the protesters, in the same breath accused the government that the widely publicised tablets of knowledge or Opon imon, which were given to students to aid there learning, was mere propaganda and not one-third of students in the state got it.

But Semiu Okanlawon, director, Bureau of Communications and Strategy, assured them that the distribution of tablets to students had not concluded. He told the protesters that the government’s plan was to bring 50,000 units of it into the county, while another 100,000 units would be assembled at a factory in Osun.

But Okanlawon could not convincingly defend the price of school uniform, quality and license of manufacture to only one company, which the parents raised in their protest. He simply said it was to create means of generating employment in the state.

In March 2014, the Catholic Dioceses of Osogbo and Ibadan, joined the Osun State Baptist Conference to protest the merging of their schools with public ones and inclusion of Ifa divination materials in the newly introduced tablet of knowledge or Opon Imo by Aregbesola.

The church even threatened legal action if the government failed to withdraw the “obnoxious” policy introduced by the Aregbesola administration in Osun State. In a statement signed by Richard Adesida, public relations officer of the Catholic Media Practitioners, CAMP, the church also asked the governor to withdraw all tablets containing Ifa divination materials from Catholic schools in the state. Adesida said if the state government refused to comply with the requests, the church would call for the withdrawal of all Christian students from the state public schools, adding that introduction of Ifa divination material was idolatry and it was against Christians’ faith.

On the merging of schools, the church argued that it was abnormal because schools were founded by various religious bodies for different reasons. “Schools established by various religious groups and denominations had a purpose and tenets upon which the schools were established…. We condemn in strong terms, the merging of our schools in Osun State with some other schools as a result of the obnoxious educational policy of the state government,” the statement said.

However, the Joint Muslims Action Forum, JOMAF, an umbrella body for all Islamic groups in Osun State, rose in defence of the governor by approving the merger of schools.

The forum, in a statement signed by Kola Uzamat, coordinator and Qaasim Odedeji, secretary, in Osogbo, also chided the Christians for opposing the use of hijab in their schools. It said hijab was a constitutional right of every Muslim female student in all public schools in the state, adding that no amount of protest or propaganda would be allowed to deny that right since the public schools were funded with tax-payers’ money.

The statement reads in part: “The protest was in bad faith and a deliberate act of sabotage and mischief in the name of missionary driven education. JOMAF faulted the protesters’ unwillingness to allow female Muslim students with hijab in the public schools.”

Having resolved all those thorny issues, it is largely expected that Aregbesola would soon rise above the current crisis which is threatening his government. But in the time being, the governor appears to be losing supporters in the state with the issue of unpaid salaries and pensions.

For the governor to get out the crisis, Onyekachi Ubani, lawyer and public commentator advised Aregbesola that he would have to redirect the course of his government policy. “He probably need to cut down on the feeding of students in the state until the finances of the state improve. He probably needs to look at other projects which are not really necessary… It is insensitive for any governor to owe it workers. According to the former finance minister, payment of salaries supposed to be the first line of payment for every civil servant. That is why we say anybody who has no background in financial management should not aspire to hold exalted position because it is not only politics you need in managing a state. You also need a financial understanding to place your priority and how to get money for your programmes. I believe he will surmount the problem, he must enthrone financial discipline,” Ubani said.

So, whatever be the case, Aregbesola for now remains in the eye of the storm until, probably he is able to fulfil his promise to pay all the workers by next month. September month is around the corner, one can only wish that he is able to do so; not so much for himself but the suffering masses in the civil service state of Osun.

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