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What makes the imbroglio even more painfully worrisome is the fact that it is happening under the government of a man who likes to wave his vaunted democratic credentials and rehash with glee his contribution to the nation’s struggle for democracy at every given opportunity
The local government crisis in Osun State has become a litmus test for our institutions. It brings to the fore the shaky foundation and systemic deficiencies of our fledgling democracy and how much a system can take before it collapses under the sheer weight of impunity and tyranny. What makes the imbroglio even more painfully worrisome is the fact that it is happening under the government of a man who likes to wave his vaunted democratic credentials and rehash with glee his contribution to the nation’s struggle for democracy at every given opportunity. Since March, the federal government has refused to release the allocation of the thirty local government areas in Osun State, under the pretext of a crisis it masterminded.
The imbroglio in Osun is quite easy to resolve, but the impasse has been allowed to degenerate into a protracted crisis because the federal government wanted it that way, as it is wont to do with states led by the opposition. Since coming to power, the Bola Tinubu-led government has earned a reputation for using underhanded tactics — even in situations where it is seemingly breaking the law — to arm-twist opposition politicians, especially governors, who engage in actions that undermine their positions and that of their party but advance its own interests and goals.
After six months of withholding its local government salary, the Osun State government on Monday instituted a new legal action at the Supreme Court against the Attorney-General of the Federation, Lateef Fagbemi (SAN), over the alleged unlawful withholding of the local governments’ monthly statutory allocation. Matters came to a head after the previous local government chairmen, who were elected in a hurriedly conducted election after the former governor of the state, Gboyega Oyetola, lost his second-term bid. Displeased by the election that brought in the Chairmen elected under his predecessor, the incumbent, Jackson Adeleke, conducted another election which saw the former chairmen voted out of office.
Since the election in 2022, the state has been enveloped by a political crisis as the former chairmen, backed by the APC-led federal government, refuse to leave office and employ all sorts of abhorrent strategies to remain in office. In March, a violent attempt by ousted APC chairmen to take over the local government secretariat claimed the lives of two people. It must be stated that the ousted local government chairmen are emboldened to act in the manner they are doing because of the support they enjoy from the federal government.
After the violence that erupted in March, the federal government decided to withhold the local government allocation again despite two courts of competent jurisdiction ruling that its action is illegal and ordering it to release the funds. The imbroglio, when juxtaposed with happenings in Rivers, not only underscores the current government executive impunity and overbearing tendencies but also its flagrant disregard for the rule of law and its troubling ability to overreach itself.
The same government that has refused to release financial allocations that the local government areas are constitutionally entitled to has no problem with releasing the allocation of a state and its entire local government areas to an unelected and illegal military administrator of a state after it orchestrated an unconstitutional removal of the state’s democratically elected government. It’s almost as if the nation no longer runs on the rule of law but on the rule of men. The withholding of the Osun local government not only grounds the business of government in the state but also further compounds the woes of the suffering people of the state, and when a government decides to inflict pain on the people for selfish political interest, men of conscience must not be scared of speaking truth to power.