Civil Society Asks National Assembly To Intervene Over Osun’s Financial Mess

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Members of the Civil Society Coalition for the Emancipation of Osun State (CSCEO) On (Tuesday, January 26, 2016) in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) has called on the National Assembly to intervene in the financial mess Osun state found itself under Governor
Rauf Aregbesola.
This call was made during a peaceful demonstration held at the premises of the National Assembly by members of the Coalition group consisting of about 20 civil and faith based organizations who converged at the complex as early as 7.30am. And in the petition submitted to both Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki and the House of Representatives Speaker, Hon. Yakubu Dogara, the group asked the National Assembly to save the state from imminent state of anarchy.
In the letters which was received on behalf of Saraki and Dogara by the Deputy Sergeant-at-Arm, A.M Nnaji, the group listed 16 issues bordering on alleged financial recklessness of the governor which caused the state to be receiving negative allocations from the Federation Account.
According to CSCEO in the letter signed by its Chairman, Comrade Adeniyi Sulaiman and the Assistant Secretary, Comrade Gbenga Oyeleke, the group urged the National Assembly to support the demand of Osun citizens for a thorough and credible investigation of the deliberate and criminal mismanagement of our meagre resources by the duo of Aregbesola and Mrs. Grace Titi Laoye-Tomori, the deputy governor which action is “threatening the peace and security of our state”.
“We are here to show our grievances with the governance of our state under the dictatorship, grossly corrupt and oppressive rule of Aregbesola who has turned Osun state into a totalitarian state where citizens have no fundamental rights but only fundamental duties.
“The governance of Osun state in the last five years has been characterized by cluelessness, highhandedness, impunity, greed and wanton disregard for time-tested principles of public management and international best practices.
“We were promised banishment of poverty and hunger, peaceful co-existence and all-round development and prosperity but what do we have five years after; poverty, hunger and starvation, backwardness, social insecurity, mutual suspicion and religious disharmony, sickness and deaths. “As it stands today, Osun is a failed state under the watch of Rauf
Adesoji Aregbesola and his rubber stamped legislators whose failure to perform their oversight functions as representative of the people is grossly responsible for the pitiable and precarious condition we have found ourselves. No matter how maladroit the governor may be, if the House of Assembly had performed its functions as enshrined in the
constitution, things would have been different. “In the light of the following and in the spirit of the anti-corruption crusade of the All Progressives Congress(APC) led-government of President Muhammadu Buhari, we are hereby requesting the intervention of your good self and the distinguished members of the Senate to support the demand of Osun citizens for a thorough and credible investigation of the deliberate and criminal mismanagement of
our meagre resources by the duo of Ogbeni Rauf Adesoji Aregbesola and Mrs. Grace Titi Laoye-Tomori, governor and deputy governor of Osun state respectively which action is threatening the peace and security of our state. “We will like you to use your good offices as worthy representatives of the people to compel the EFCC and ICPC to act on our petitions
which they duly received but which they have decided to bury. Any attempt to bury them further may portray President Muhammadu Buhari and his APC led government as being insincere with their anti-corruption crusade.
“We will like to counsel here that what is good for the goose should also be good for the gander. There should be no sacred cows in the implementation of Mr. President’s anti-corruption campaign as it is well known that charity must begin at home.
“Finally, we will like to inform you that we shall do all that are within the provisions of the amended 1999 Constitution to effect the recall of the unscrupulous rubberstamp legislators of the Osun State House of Assembly by their constituencies. During the rally, which had Olukanni Ayodeji the leader of The Voices, protesters carried placards some of which read, “Osun people want FG to take Osun from Rauf Aregbesola”, “NASS, Osun Pensioners are dying”, “Aregbesola must go”, “No to Minus-Allocation” and “Aregbe has sold Osun into debt slavery” among others.