As the debacle over the withheld monthly allocation of local government councils in Osun persists, Governor Ademola Adeleke and the state chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) have disagreed over the role played by the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) in the crisis.

It is recalled that monthly allocation due to 30 local government councils and one Area office in Modakeke had been withheld by the Federal Government since February following the Court of Appeal judgment in Akure, which purportedly reinstated All Progressives Congress (APC) sacked council bosses elected during the twilight of former Governor Gboyega Oyetola’s administration in 2022.

However, while the incumbent state governor, Senator Ademola Adeleke, lauded the NBA for calling on the Federal Government to release the allocation to the newly elected local government chairmen of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) during the February 22 council poll conducted by the Osun State Independent Electoral Commission (OSSIEC), the APC lambasted the professional body for its alleged “devious meddlesomeness in the crisis.”

A statement by Adeleke’s spokesperson, Olawale Rasheed, particularly commended the NBA leadership for setting up a committee to investigate the Osun local government question and for demonstrating the rare courage to release the report, which declared that there was no legal basis for the continuous withholding of Osun local government allocations.

Adeleke stated, “I am particularly pleased that the NBA report clearly noted that it was a court of law that sacked the APC chairmen from office in 2022, not me as being peddled in some quarters. After their sack in 2022, the APC chairmen filed for stay of execution which the court denied. I was not in any way responsible for their sack. The NBA finding has authenticated this reality.

“The election of February 22, 2025, to fill the vacuum created by the judicial sack of the APC chairmen was conducted in compliance with another court order. Our administration has acted all along within the confines of the law and the constitution, as affirmed by the NBA letter to the Attorney General of the Federation.

The action of the NBA on the Osun local government matters has cleared all doubts anybody may be harbouring, as the rightful elected chairmen and councillors for Osun local governments are those elected on February 23, 2025, as again pronounced by the Court of Appeal of June 13, 2025.”

However, reacting to Adeleke’s position on Wednesday evening, the state chairman of the APC, Tajudeen Lawal, in another statement by the party’s director of media and information, Kunle Olabisi, lampooned the NBA for being a meddlesome interloper over the lingering leadership crisis plaguing the councils.

Lawal contended that “the NBA was needlessly dabbling into the issue of the delay in the payment of the allocations for the local government for six months running. We had thought that the body, which ideally is peopled by a galaxy of noble professionals in the mastery of law, was coming up with an enactment of a new law. But alas! Its outing was a bundle of disappointment to the chagrin of the right-thinking members of the society!”

According to him, that the NBA leadership could descend so low to have illegally constituted itself into a law court whereby its finding it appropriate in its estimation to dispense suspicious judgemental submission spoke volumes of what irredeemable mess those saddled with the responsibility of leading the highly revered legal body have turned it to.

“In the first instance, the NBA is not a party to the suit. They have no locus to review it. The NBA is not the Supreme Court of Nigeria. They have no jurisdiction to review or even interpret the judgement of the Court of Appeal.

“It is appalling that the NBA leadership that could not lend its voice to condemn the ruthless killing of one of our reinstated council chairmen, Hon. Remi Abass, the chairman, Irewole Local Government Council Area of Osun State, and other members and supporters of our party by the political hoodlums,” the statement added.