Kwara community demands monarch’s 21 years’ pay, urges probe

Traditional ruler of Jebba in Mooro Local Council of Kwara State, Abdulkadir Adebara, as well as his chiefs and subjects, has appealed to Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq to pay his salary arrears of over two decades.

The community also urged the governor to rise to the administrative challenges of his office by investigating how the monarch’s files disappeared in the Ministry of Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs.

Specifically, the 101-year-old king told newsmen, in his palace, yesterday, that he had neither been paid salary nor emoluments accrued to his office since he became the Oba 21 years ago.

He urged AbdulRazaq to “do the needful for me by giving me all my salaries and due entitlements deprived me since I was rated by the late Mohammed Lawal.”

Also, the community chiefs, led by the Eesa of Jebbaland, Jaiyeola Omotosho, recalled that Adebara was appointed the Oba of Jebba, of third class status, on May 16, 2003 by the then Governor Lawal (of blessed memory).

Earlier in 1983, The Guardian gathered, the stool of the Oba of Jebba was graded third class by the late Governor Adamu Attah, but was withdrawn in 1984 by the military regime of Group Capt. Salaudeen Latinwo.

“We have strong reasons to believe that some officials of the Ministry of Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, in cahoots with one or two traditional rulers, are out to frustrate the payment of the accumulated salaries and allowances of our monarch,” the chiefs alleged.

They, however, wanted the governor to constitute separate traditional council for Moro Local Council and immediately upgrade the stool of Oba of Jebba to first class status in line with his contemporaries of 1983 such as Elese of Igbaja, Olosi of Osi, Olupako of Share, Etsu Tsaragi.