TIMOTHY AGBOR, OSOGBO
THE Peoples Democratic Party in Osun State has berated the administration of Governor Gboyega Oyetola for boasting over prompt payment of workers’ salaries in the state.
The major opposition party said it was absurd for the governor to sing-praise himself over payment of salary, which is a normal duty of a governor.
The PDP, however, said Oyetola was only “sweating so profusely” in search of “legitimacy and acceptability” in a state where the party said, he was extremely unpopular.
The Chairman of the party in the state, Sunday Bisi, in a statement issued on Friday, reacted to a statement recently credited to the state Commissioner for Political Affairs and Inter-Governmental Relations, Taiwo Akeju, where he said the administration of Oyetola had been paying workers’ salaries even before the Federal civil servants received theirs.
Bisi wondered why the whole state should “take a kneel on the mountain top” over mere payment of workers’ salaries by the state government when scores of civil servants and pensioners had not been paid their entitlements.
He advised the ruling All Progressives Congress in the state to stop self grading itself over payment of workers’ salaries, adding that “the governor and his noise-making subordinates have reduced themselves to mere jesters on serious duty post.”
The PDP asked the governor to resign if he was bereft of his routine administrative duties as a state governor.
The party argued that a normal memo dispatchable exercise testifies to payment of salaries during the administration of the PDP but expressed displeasure that such duty had “suddenly changed into a poster achievement of a state governor since the advent of the APC government in Osun State.”
The PDP said, “We would want to know whether the governor or and his indolent commissioner are not drawing their bogus salary and allowances from the state’s treasury, even while doing virtually nothing.
“Having reduced governance to such a joke, however, we demand that the governor finds a way round payment of outstandimg entitlements of public servants in the state, including the over 30 months unpaid workers salary, as well as similar volume of butchered pensioners monthly token, which have been left unattended to since Oyetola rusumed with his fraudulent government of policy denial.”
“We have also noted with dismay, the persistent mockery of pensioners in the state with what could best be described in common parlance as audio release of funds for their entitlements. It is worrisome that a whole governor would be going about lying about release of over 30billion naira for pensioners in the state.”
The party added, “Though, we sympathise with Mr Oyetola for sweating so profusely in search of legitimacy and acceptability in a state he is extremely unpopular. However, he should stop his penchant for barefaced lies, trying to curry undeserved public pity with utter disregard for personal dignity of the retired workers.
“The PDP therefore called on Mr Oyetola and his assembly of school-boy commissioners to do their job they are being paid for instead of continuous desecration of the state with songs of payment of salary like an unweaned child in government.”
“If Mr Governor and his men are so confused, we advise they take excursion visits to other reasonable constituent states of the federation where talk of salary payment has never been on the front burners of public discourse because such exercise to them, is normal and an expedient obligation of anyone in government without recourse to seeking sympathetic applause,” the Chairman said.
