Osun APC slams Adeleke over alleged plan to use LGs to borrow N300bn
BY STEPHEN GBADAMOSI
The Osun State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) says it has discovered a plot by the Governor Ademola Adeleke-led government to plunge the state into “an avoidable debt of N300 billion by making use of the 30 local government council areas in the state as a collateral to borrow the money from the bank.”
Chairman of the state APC, Tajudeen Lawal, in a statement on Monday, said: “Information has it that Governor Adeleke and members of his kitchen cabinet on Monday invited all the illegal local government council chairmen purportedly elected under the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), popularly known as ‘sit-at-home council chairmen,’ heads of local government administration (HLAs), directors of administration (DAs) and heads of finance (HFs) in all the 30 local government areas in the state and the Area Office to a meeting at the State Secretariat, Abere, Osun State, where the intention of the state government to borrow the money was disclosed to the top local government career officers.
“Further information revealed that each of the local government areas would be made a collateral for the N300 billion loan being sought by Governor Adeleke out of which promises to handsomely take care of the co-operative council senior career officers were made.
“It will be recalled that since Governor Adeleke lost the series of legal battles on the control of the local government areas through the judgments of the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court, he has been trying all manner of sinister and crude ways to control the councils through the backdoor without luck.
“There’s no justifiable reason for the Adeleke-led government to go to such route of deliberately and wickedly plunging the state into avoidable debts which generations unborn would be made liable for its repayment.”
Lawal said further that the governor had no locus to secure such a loan.
“The unsavoury development is tantamount to Governor Adeleke’s pungent abhorrence for the rules of law, since it is known to all and sundry that the highest court in the land has made a pronouncement, granting an unconditional autonomy for the administration of the local government councils nationwide.
“We implore all the discerning minds in the society to condemn the illegal activity of the Governor Adeleke-led administration to use the local government councils which the Supreme Court has deprived him of having an authority on as a collateral to borrow a huge and staggering amount of N10 billion per local government amounting to N300 billion.
“The management of the Unity Bank Plc too should be wary of the fact that it is a settled law that the states don’t have such authority on the local government councils and that any of such deals is an illegality which is not binding either now or in the foreseeable future.
“It should also resonate in the memory of the management of the Unity Bank Plc that the recognised council executives in Osun State today are the Court of Appeal APC reinstated local government council chairmen who have been carrying out their statutory duties diligently for the past one year.
“It is necessary to warn the management of Unity Bank Plc that any contract entered into by them with the illegal council chairmen is a nullity as the reinstated APC chairmen are the only ones known to the law of the land.
“Governor Adeleke should be called to order by the stakeholders of the state and be made to understand that the state is not part of his family estates which he could be administering through his whims and caprices but the law of the land.
“We, as a party, are condemning the deliberate unpatriotic plans of Governor Adeleke to add to the burden of the people of the state by illegally scheming to squander the money meant for the development of the grassroots on frivolous issues which could not be in the interest of the people of the state.
“The development is in clear contravention of the Debt Management Office Act 2003, which specifies that the local government cannot borrow such money without the signature of the Federal Minister of Finance, the Accountant-General of the Federation and the executive councils of the local governments, that is, the reinstated APC chairmen and councilors,” Lawal said.
