Just days after thugs presumed to be aligned with the All Progressive Congress (APC) disrupted workers demonstrated in demand of their long overdue arrears, other residents of Osogbo, the Osun State capital, were attacked on Thursday for protesting against the current Governor of Osun, APC’s Rauf Aregbesola.

About 25 thugs wielding guns, axes, and batons came via minibuses to a newsstand at Makson Junction near the old Governor’s office in Osogbo and assaulted bystanders, leaving several injured.

It is likely that these individuals were attacked because they pose a political concern for Governor Aregbesola in the midst of a legal battle with Justice Folahanmi Oloyede, who has called for an investigation of the governor for mismanagement of public funds.

APC Director of Publicity and Strategy Kunle Oyatomi and Governor Aregbesola's Director of Media and Publicity Semiu Okanlawon have both refused to comment on Thursday's attacks.

One of the victims of the attack, a vendor by the name of Kazeem Madamidola, said that during the attack the thugs accused the people gathered at the newsstand of being anti-Aregbesola.

"The thugs pulled down my news-stand, tore all the newspapers and started beating people up,” Mr. Madamidola said. “They accused them of booing Aregbesola during the rally on Tuesday and threatened that by today, they will kill anyone who comes around here."

The Civil Societies Coalition for Emancipation of Osun State (CECEO) has been urging President Buhari to discipline the governor for his use of violence in Osun State. Comrade Adeniyi Alimi Sulaiman, the Chairman of CECEO, condemned the attack in strong terms and said, "The whole world is aware of Aregbesola's unpopularity in the State. His plan is to keep people's mouths shut so as to put is in perpetual bondage."


http://saharareporters.com/2015/07/10/apc-affiliated-thugs-attack-anti-aregbesola-crowd

Let’s say it the way it is: no matter how the Osun State governor and his supporters spin it, the state is in a mess. A big mess for that matter, with something close to apocalypse going on in my home state unless we don’t want to speak truth to the government.

Last September after Governor Rauf Aregbesola’s victory at the polls, this column, in an open letter congratulated him for a hard-fought electoral battle where he dug in and defeated the Peoples Democratic Party blitzkrieg. Unfortunately, he has not displayed the same energy in facing the poverty monster ravaging the state. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in Aregbesola’s government failure in paying civil servants’ salaries in the state.

At the moment, the All Progressives Congress-led government owes seven months salary arrears with civil servants on strike and the machinery of the state in coma only being sustained by a life support machine. Three different incidents show the level of degradation ongoing in Osun.

First was a suicide attempt by a local government staff last month that could not keep up with the demands of life as a husband and father. Fortunately, he was stopped before he could carry out his intention but this did not stop a spokesperson of the governor from saying that there was no nexus between the suicide attempt and non-payment of salaries. The second one was an encounter I had with an octogenarian in Abuja few weeks back. He told me of how he and a friend went to visit their old senior in secondary school in Osogbo, the state capital, and they met his private schools under lock. Shocked by this, they asked why he decided to close the schools to which he responded that students could not afford to pay fees because their parents have not been paid just as it was getting difficult for him too to keep up with financial obligations. The third was that of a pastor requesting that members of his congregation should bring food items and money for those who have not been paid their salaries. Apart from the personal encounter, the other two were well reported in the media. But what happened to the lofty ideas and dreams of our dear governor? What happened to the dream of turning Osun into a food basket for the western part of Nigeria? What about the Dagbolu international market?

By now, the governor must have discovered that governance is more than sloganeering and singing solidarity song across the length and breadth of the state. As commendable as infrastructural development is and Aregbesola’s government tried along this line, nothing sums up his government more than the expression: good intention gone awry. Wonder who or what pushed him to build a cargo airport in the state? It is clear that he has not been served well by his cabinet, especially the former finance commissioner. As at January this year, the governor presented a budget of N197billion to the House of Assembly, which adjusted it upward to N201.74billion to cover for the non-inclusion of salaries of the middle school teachers. Did the government not want to pay these teachers when it re-classified schools?

Students sat for WASCE and NECO examinations without having the benefit of teachers preparing them for those examinations. An analysis of the 2015 budget also revealed that N18.6 billion was budgeted for the Governor’s office with N6.925billion for recurrent expenditure and N11.7billion for capital expenditure. Interestingly, N2billion is meant to pay salaries of the governor, deputy governor, judges and the state independent electoral commission that has not conducted any election since its inception. There’s also a provision of N1.159billion for salaries, allowances, remuneration of career officers and political office holders in the governor’s office while N3.775billion is for general administration of bureaus and agencies in the governor’s office. While inaugurating the House of Assembly last week, Aregbesola said that he was the first to raise the alarm about dwindling allocation to the states in 2013, yet his government went ahead to propose a budget of N197billion for 2015.

How did he hope to finance it without a corresponding increase in the revenue of the state? The Nation newspaper of January 27 reported an official of the state saying that the budget will be implemented. “Government of the State of Osun has said despite the dwindling resources of the state, its 2015 budget is implementable, as all the machinery have been put in place to ensure its implementation. The Permanent Secretary, Budget and Economic Planning, Mr Segun Olorunsogo stated this on Tuesday while giving an overview of the 2015 budget estimates before the joint House of Assembly Committee on Finance and Appropriation and Public Accounts.” By the way, what about the helicopter purchased for security surveillance in the state? What better security than the welfare of citizens, especially the workers who are being denied their due?

By - Wale Fatade.

http://www.thecable.ng/osun-mess

I am beginning to be embarrassed by what is going on in my home State of Osun. I am beginning to feel ashamed that this is happening to the common and the poor in the State of the Living Spring. I am beginning to feel compunctious and distressed by the sheer heartlessness that is presently persisting in the state. It is like the State of Osun is being managed by bloodless beings that have no ability to feel and understand the ramifications of owing seven months salaries to workers of varying grades and the pensioners in the state.

I am also being embarrassed as a journalist. Why has it been difficult for this to be headlines in the mainstream media in Nigeria? The primary purpose of government is to cater and guarantee the welfare and security of the governed. The concomitant responsibility of the media is to ensure that the government does not renege in these responsibilities.

I understand that everything is now political in Nigeria and in the Southwest especially where speaking the truth has become a serious challenge. But we have to draw the line where the welfare, security and the survival of a big chunk of our people is concerned. This does not mean that a single life lost would not be tragic, but what is concerned here is not a single life, it is the lives of hundreds of thousands if not millions of our people that are involved. It is emotionally harrowing for any father that cannot put food on the table for his family. It is psychologically traumatizing for a mother to watch her children go hungry when she has not been a loafer.

It is already an eyesore how someone could be presiding over a government that has refused to pay its workers for seven months and still counting! It is tantamount to wickedness and cruelty of the highest order for Osun State government under Ogbeni Rauf Adesoji Aregbesola to owe workers wages for seven months when he has been receiving the state’s federal allocation up to date excluding the month of May 2015, which is at least a matter of public record.

It would be recalled that before the Osun State Governorship Election of August 9, 2014, Governor Aregbesola owed about three months of wages to the civil servants, teachers and the pensioners. It was not until the defeat of his colleague, Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State in June that year that he hurriedly found the money to pay the arrears to alleviate the threat of losing re-election. This is despite the fact that Aregbesola has been collecting the State Allocation up until June of that year.

What this scenario suggests is that Aregbesola had the money to pay but did not want to pay? Why this was the case is very difficult to fathom. Is the same situation now repeating itself on a larger scale? Is this a deliberate policy or what? Does Aregbesola realize he is punishing the entire people of the State? What kind of priority does he have for him to allow the people of the State to go hungry for seven months?

It is not an acceptable excuse that the allocation has dwindled. There is no excuse that would suffice under the sun for letting the workers, the pensioners, the teachers – people who struggle everyday to survive- to go hungry because they are denied the fruits of their sweat. If Aregbesola does not have a milk of human kindness flowing in his vein, then it is possible that he does not know the enormity of the damages he is foisting on the state. If he does have some milk of human kindness in him, then he ought to know that seven harrowing months without wages constitute economic, social and security threats to the state and its people.

Yet, here is a man who lays claim to a degree of activism with some bent to socialism from his days in Ibadan Polytechnic. What kind of ideology is this? What kind of “radicalism” is this? And what kind of management is this? Any idea that ridicules the place of man in the economic chain is not worth its salt. Even red hot capitalism knows that without man, capitalism would be doomed. So, what excuses would a “socialist” like Aregbesola have for povertizing the poor people of Osun State?

The Chairman, Finance Commissioners Forum, Mr. Timothy Odah, expressed concern over the low revenue generated for the month of April. He had said “the country is facing serious financial and economic crisis.” He also pointed out that “The Excess Crude Account is depleted already, and you are aware that we had earlier resolved that there should be a stop on the use of ECA to augment what the three tiers of government share monthly. So, the ECA is currently depleted and it has gone beyond the level that we can get anything reasonable from it.” But he also criticized states owing salaries, saying the governors of those states should have made the payment of salaries their top priority after collecting their monthly statutory allocation.

So, one is asking now, what is really going on with the allocations that have been received on behalf of the State? What is Aregbesola doing with the “little” and “reduced” allocations he has been given on behalf of the State of Osun? Where are the monies going? What are the current priorities of Aregbesola? Whatever such priorities are, could there be greater priorities than the welfare of the people? What are the more important urgent needs in the state than the welfare and the survival of the people, many of whom are poor?

It is amazing that social critics like Femi Falana are keeping quiet while this atrocity is going on. Where is Professor Wole Soyinka who is a good friend of the Osun State government? Is he keeping quiet in the face of this tyranny? Where are the Civil Society groups who constantly shout in the press? Are their targets selective? Are they also on the payroll of politicians too? Where are the conscientious people in our society? Where are the national and state leaders of the APC on this matter? Where are the remnants of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Labour Party in the State? Is everybody already bought to the point that we are so unfeeling, wicked and inconsiderate? Does this mean that we are ready to sacrifice the welfare of our people for political correctness?

What is going on in our media houses? What has become of journalism for the ideal society that we all seek? Is every journalist bought over? Why is the Media not shouting itself hoarse on this issue? Yes, I know that Osun State is not the only one owing salaries in Nigeria. I know there are other states owing varying number of months of salaries across the country. But seven months is a long time for an average man to do without any income.

It is All Progressive Congress (APC) that is magnifying the dangers of corruption in our society and rightly so. It is the platform that they used to convince Nigerians to vote for the party at the national level. If you don’t pay a man for seven months, won’t such a man look for how to survive and preserve his own family by resulting to corrupt practices? Is this the way APC is planning to fight corruption? By turning everyone into a potential thief? What is “Progressive” about forcing the people to go on undeserved hunger strike?

The state is dying gradually. Families are being dislocated. Unemployment is no longer the injurious mantra to sing about. Lack of wages is the new vogue. The security of the state is under serious threat. The economy of the state is at a standstill. There is no purchasing power for the greatest number of our people. Businesses are panting because of lack of patronage. Market women are wallowing in stagnancy occasioned by this circumstance. Transporters are tottering from the pangs of absentee passengers. Artisans are reeling in redundancy. Teachers are no longer teaching. Children are becoming certified vagabonds. The workers are on strike, there is not even any show of empathy through negotiation and discussion. The State of Osun is in comatose. This cannot continue to go on.

This is tyranny on the part of Governor Aregbesola. This is really mean and inconsiderate. It is high time for Aregbesola to redeem himself. It is time to save the poor from agonies and psychological pulverizing. It is time for him to come down from the horse and feel the pains of the poor people of Osun. He should stop spending whatever money accruing to the state on any other thing until further notice. The only priority that is worth pursuing right now is the payment of wages to civil servants, teachers and entitlements to pensioners until things get better. There is urgent need to put an end to this charade and shenanigans.

“In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility – I welcome it.” - John F. Kennedy, in his Inaugural Address January 20, 1961.


Written by: Remi Oyeyemi


http://saharareporters.com/2015/06/05/unpaid-wages-brutalizing-poor-osun-state-remi-oyeyemi

Adufaye: weda we win or nt....am a die hard gooners fan....we shal al sail 2 salt

Dnt lie in ur mind u av lost dis game

slap1: I just hope we win by God's grace. AMEN!

By we I want to believe u mean swansea