From Lateef Dada, Osogbo
The Osun State Chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC), on Thursday, said that Governor Ademola Adeleke has failed woefully to fund key sectors of the economy in his last two years, except for the allocation to his office, which has recorded 170 percent performance.
The party posited that Adeleke has spent N630 billion of the revenue accruable to the state in the last two years without improvement in health, education, and agriculture.
Reacting to the claim by the government that the administration of Adeleke has delivered on his promises, APC said the state has rather been drawn backward by the present government.
The APC’s Director of Media and Information, Kola Olabisi, who spoke at a press conference to address the success claims of Adeleke in Osogbo, maintained that Adeleke’s government has proven to be an irredeemable failure in education, citing the sack of 1,500 teachers employed by his predecessor without replacement, and the increase in tuition fees, which has made education difficult for parents.
“Given the N630 billion revenue (from both the state and 30 LGAs) that has come the way of the current administration, the government should not have had any excuse not to have fully settled the modulated arrears.
“Specifically, the state government received from January 2023 to September 2024 a sum of N385 billion from federal allocation, grants, IGR, etc. This includes N4.3 billion UBEC and N1.3 billion TETFUND grants received from the federal government in 2023 to uplift infrastructure in our primary and tertiary institutions. All these FG grants do not form part of the federation allocation, which has doubled since 2023 when subsidies on fuel and forex were removed by the federal government.
“By all estimates, Osun has been lucky with revenue, particularly with the federal revenue, which has recorded a 100% rise in the last 12 months. The federal allocation in 2022, before the inauguration of the current government, was N73 billion (before debt deductions). Meanwhile, as of the end of the third quarter of 2024 (September), the state had already received N153 billion in federal allocation, N50 billion above the N99 billion projected for the whole year. In spite of this financial windfall, Governor Adeleke has refused to fund the key sectors of the economy, except for the allocation to his office, which has recorded 170% performance thus far.
“Of the N82 billion earmarked for personnel this year, only N39 billion, representing 47% of the projection for the year, was released as of September. This is according to the budget performance record for the third quarter. It is strange to note also that out of the N20.5 billion earmarked for pension and gratuity in 2024, only N4.8 billion, representing less than 20%, had been released as of September. In fact, out of the N11.4 billion budgeted for pension and gratuity arrears, no kobo was released as of the end of the third quarter. The picture here is that the claim of Governor Adeleke of offsetting the backlog of pension and gratuity is a fat lie from the pit of hell. There is nothing to justify the claim in the official document of the state government.
“The government has also been a fantastic failure in health in the last two years. Another question mark on the administration of Senator Adeleke in the health sector is the lack of adequate personnel, having sacked, without replacement, about 2,000 health workers, comprising nurses, medical doctors, and pharmacists employed by his predecessor. The performance of the administration in agriculture and food security is also nothing to write home about,” APC said.
