•Group decries FG’s continued withholding of council funds
Osun State Governor, Ademola Adeleke, has, again, accused the Blue Economy Minister, Gboyega Oyetola, of masterminding the Osun local council crisis, insisting that the tenure of APC chairmen elapsed in 2025 and cannot be elongated under the law and Supreme Court precedents.”

The Special Adviser to the Minister, Bolaji Akinola, while reacting to Adeleke’s recent accusation of Oyetola, warned the governor against misleading the public over local council funding.

In a statement issued yesterday, Akinola rejected claims by Adeleke that funds meant for Osun local councils were being withheld, describing the allegation as “propaganda, falsehood and deliberate misinformation.”

He said the governor’s comments were aimed at deflecting attention from what he termed “administrative failure and disregard for judicial authority.”

Akinola said any complications surrounding local council financing were the result of actions taken by the Osun State Government itself, including what he described as repeated legal challenges.

Reacting to the minister’s statement, the governor’s spokesperson, Olawale Rasheed, faulted the entire submission of the minister on the local council crisis, positing that the former governor remains the chief architect of the paralysis and the untold hardship being inflicted on Osun people.

The statement clarified that a Federal High Court, rather than Adeleke, sacked the APC chairmen in 2022, and the judgment was later validated by a Court of Appeal judgment, which also acknowledged that newly validly elected chairmen.

MEANWHILE, the Movement for Credible Elections (MCE) has condemned the continued withholding of statutory allocations due to the local council of Osun State, describing the action as unlawful, immoral, and a dangerous abuse of federal power aimed at politically coercing a duly elected state government.

Speaking on behalf of the movement, the Head of Secretariat, Olawale Okunniyi, said the Federal Government’s refusal to release the funds is a deliberate and calculated ploy to frustrate the Osun State Government and compel Governor Ademola Adeleke to join the bandwagon of the ongoing alliance with President Bola Tinubu’s All Progressives Congress (APC).

“This is not governance; this is blackmail. It is an unconscionable use of state power to starve the third tier of government of funds guaranteed by the Constitution, simply to achieve a partisan political agenda of self-perpetuation,” Okunniyi stated.

The MCE noted that the local council system is a constitutionally recognised autonomous tier of government, stressing that statutory allocations to councils do not belong to the Federal Government or the ruling administration in the states but to the people at the grassroots. According to the movement, withholding these funds translates directly into unpaid salaries, crippled primary healthcare services, abandoned basic education responsibilities, and untold suffering of the ordinary citizens in Osun.

He added: “It is both ironic and deeply disturbing that the administration of President Bola Tinubu is subjecting Osun State to the same treatment that Nigerians widely condemned when he was the Executive Governor of Lagos State under former President Olusegun Obasanjo. What was wrong with such action then (unconstitutional and oppressive) cannot suddenly become right today.”