20 Months After, Adeleke’s Govt Failed To Replace Scrapped Osun Social Protection Programmes

By Waheed Adekunle

To start with, the administration of Governor Ademola Adeleke will be two years in a matter of months and since its inception, the administration has been making series of bogus promises to hoodwink the unsuspecting members of the public.

The administration assumed the public is gullible enough to believe its rhetorics.

Aside the palpable failure of the Governor Adeleke government to fulfill many of its electoral promises made while seeking the office, the current government has been poorly rated not only in performance since assumption of office, or in all the sectors thus far, but also in the managing of the humongous funds accrued to the state. So far, over 300 billion naira has accrued to the State in the last 20 months.

The peak of this is the poor performance of the state budget in the first quarter of the year validating the claims of the opposition that the current government meant no good for the populace.

The woeful performance of the current government in all aspects of the economy, most significantly in the education, agriculture, health and commerce even infrastructure where the governor himself has been superintending as the Commissioner of Works, is a clear testament to the abyss the government has sunk.

As citizens, we can’t forget in a jiffy many of the electoral promises made by Governor Adeleke while canvassing for votes and after his election as the governor. It is on record that 24 hours after assuming office, Governor Adeleke issued six arbitrary Executive Orders, including one sacking all the workers employed by his predecessor, Alhaji Adegboyega Oyetola now Minister of Marine and Blue Economy.

The duo of Executive Order 3 on Employment and Executive Order 4 on Appointments read in parts: *”All employments in the service of Osun State government made in any capacity into any capacity in all Ministries, Departments, Agencies, Commissions, Boards and Parastatals after July 17th, 2022 be and are hereby nullified. All appointments in the service of Osun State Government made in any capacity into any capacity in all the Ministries, Departments, Agencies, Commissions, Boards and Parastatals after July 17th, 2022 be and are hereby reversed”.* These orders were reeled out, out of ulterior motives, unhealthy political sentiments and vendetta not minding the damning implications on the welfare and general well-being of the populace.

After the parochial issuance of the obnoxious Executive Orders that truncated the well-structured template inherited from his immediate predecessor, close to 40 Permanent Secretaries were callously demoted, over 2,000 health workers were sacked, close to 20,000 volunteers of Osun Youth Employment Scheme, OYES were sent home, about 2,000 vendors of the popular social security programme – Osun Elementary School Feeding and Health Programme ‘OMEAL’ were sacked; over 1,500 school teachers were equally sacked, as well as callous withdrawal of employment letters issued to about 66 freelance staffers engaged by the management of the Osun State Broadcasting Corporation, OSBC who were gainfully employed by the former Governor Oyetola.

It is in the public domain that the current government had on several occasions pledged to recruit health workers to replace those arbitrarily sacked but all to no avail. The same government also promised to recruit cadets into the award-winning Osun State Youth Employment Scheme who were mindlessly sacked, but till today, no alternative has been provided.

It is unfortunate that the embattled governor who endlessly boasted to have come to govern Osun State with local and foreign currencies could be found wanting in fulfilling the electoral promises made to earn votes.

Up until now, no reinstatement of any of the over “12000 sacked workers,” let alone recruiting new hands into the MDAs in the last 20 months. Instead, the incumbent government has been paying a lip service to score cheap political points.

We shall continue to bring to the fore the ills in the current government not to ridicule anyone but to hold people in government accountable to the citizens as the day of reckoning is fast approaching. The citizens are awaiting adequate accounts of Governor Adeleke’s stewardship.

May God heal our land!