Adeleke uses allegation of looted assets to distract Omipidan – New Telegraph

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Ismail Omipidan was the chief press secretary to former Osun State Governor Alhaji Isiaka Oyetola. In this interview with OLAOLU OLADIPO, he discussed the controversial issues relating to the seizure of power by the outgoing governor Ademola Adeleke. Excerpts:

Why has it been difficult for a smooth transfer of power between your government and the incumbent Osun State?

We made every effort to get them on board. We wrote to them formally inviting them to a meeting. The letter has been sent and acknowledged. We wrote to them to come and meet us before November 27, the date of the swearing in of the new governor. When they got back to us, they said there would be no need for a meeting, but that we should assign the task to the highest government official. When we left, the highest government official was the head of department. We handed over the transfer note. We have prepared two documents; one was the detailed financial reports of the state of state finances.

The second was the real H and Over Note, containing everything about the state. The document was about 200 pages. We wrote to them exactly on November 23 and the letter was acknowledged and duly signed but we never heard from them and when they said we should pass the baton to the highest government official we We responded with a cover letter titled Procurement Report Consultation. In it (the letter), we clearly said that we were handing over the assets of the government as they had indicated to the highest official. It would be foolhardy for anyone to say that we made the handover very difficult for them.

They have always accused your administration of doing everything to frustrate the work of the procurement committee? How did we interfere with the work of the committee?

Once the elections were over, they showed nothing to present them as a responsible people, as a people interested in a peaceful transfer of power. If you remember, just three days after the election they started making outlandish allegations that there had been massive looting of government property, theft of government property and all that. They issued about two or three statements to this effect, all full of lies.

Later they said that they were setting up a transition committee and in my engagement with the chairman of the transition committee, a certain Dr. Oladimeji, I challenged him that if you knew you were going to set up a committee of transition, why start with Lies and propaganda? I challenged him to provide proof of all the lies contained in the statements they issued. The next thing he said was that some of their statements, especially the one that was released the day before our handover. He told me he was not the author of the statement and that he had not verified the claims of the campaign spokesperson until we had a radio engagement. To date, they have not provided any evidence for all the allegations they have made. From day one, they showed no sign of cooperation on their part. We shouldn’t be blamed for their own lack of cooperation and the wisdom to turn hostile from day one.

Would you say that this lack of cooperation is responsible for the massive looting of government property in many government buildings?

Nope! When you say government property has been looted, it means you concede the lies they tell. It is unfortunate that some professionals, when they come to government, abandon the ethics of their profession. I’m sure you’ve seen the reports, I mean the videos. Can this report represent a balanced and objective report of the event? Was it just for us? The governor’s spokesman betrayed himself by even granting an interview in this same report. This clearly shows that it was orchestrated to blackmail and slander my principal’s personality.

I have a document to show that the day they took inventory, it was done with the head of detail and one of the new governor’s security aides. Both of them crossed and they took charge, they crossed everything. The names of the (new) governors were A Omale and Pius Akpan. They were DSS agents attached to Governor Ademola Adeleke. These assets were handed over to them without any form of complaint. It should further be noted that there is no suggestion that any of the elements of the buildings were washed away as all were intact when handed over. This was done on November 26, 2022. The document was signed by the Head of Retail to Mr. Governor.

Which of the governors?

The former governor because the date was November 26, because at that time my principal was still governor of the state. So if they went through Government House, after they were sworn in, the question is; is it fair to accuse former government officials of looting the buildings? If there has been any looting, we should put it on Ademola Adeleke’s doorstep, as his aides have officially and officially taken over Government House. Small as I am, if I didn’t loot my quarters, how can you now accuse the governor of looting the governor’s residence? I have to tell you what the governor’s residence looked like when we took over and what it looked like when we left. It is to the credit of the last government that we carried out major renovations to the residence of the governor. The week they released this video was the same week they got it wrong in court. In order to divert people’s attention, they invented this. The only explanation I could give is that they do what they do to distract people from what happened to them in court.

Could you tell us about the dispute between your team and the government of the day over the hiring of more than 12,000 new workers for the state civil service?

They are already telling the people that they have not deposed any traditional rulers. They like to go back and forth on subjects, it’s their trademark. They will tell you something today and say something else tomorrow. When confronted by the people, they said they had not removed any traditional rulers. Let me say this, contrary to their claim, we did not employ 12,000 new workers, they came up with the figure of 12,000.

I have challenged them since October to publish the list of these workers and to date they have not. did we use? Yes! We only employed a little over 2,000 workers. Of this figure, 1,500 of them were part of the teaching staff. When we came to government, we discovered the need to reform the education sector. When a panel we put together submitted its reports, one of the recommendations was that we should close the gap in the teacher-student ratio. We were told that we needed to hire 7,200 new teachers. We saw that we couldn’t commit that number and could only take 2,500. In doing so, we opted to take them in batches.

The recruitment exam was organized by JAMB for the state. We took 1,000 of the 2,500 we needed. The recruitment process started before the elections. It was not about setting up the new government because anyone with such an idea would say that we had anticipated our impending loss at the polls. If you have such an idea, then you mean we are putting up roadblocks for ourselves. We have carried out several road projects which we embarked on despite the fact that we lost the elections. We have decided not to let politics take precedence over governance. We did this until the last day

What about the controversies generated by the dismissal of three traditional chiefs upon the arrival of the new government?

Prior to our arrival, there was a court case regarding Ila’s Oragun Stool that lasted nearly four years. The moment we have arrived is when the whole issue has been resolved by the courts. Akirun of Ikirun had completed the selection process a year before the confirmation by the State Executive Council and the process took so long due to the legal hurdle.

It was when the legal hurdle was cleared that confirmation also came. They claimed that there were legal issues surrounding them. If that was the case, they should have anticipated the conclusion of cases before intervening. We did nothing with regard to the appointment of traditional chiefs and the recruitment of new staff who did not follow the established procedure. We have installed more than 20 traditional rulers, some of them in Ede where he is from, why did he focus on just these three if the policy had not been introduced across the board?

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