APC kicks against extension of tenure of Osun Head of Service

The Osun State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has kicked against the extension of thr tenure of the state Head of Service, Mr Samuel Ayanleye Aina.

Governor Ademola Adeleke earlier announced that the tenure of the Head of Service which was earlier scheduled to end by January 24th, 2024 was extended by three years.

Reacting, the Osun State chairman of the APC, Sooko Tajudeen Lawal, in a statement issued by the party’s Director of Media and Information, Chief Kola Olabisi, today, stated that the scenario marks the beginning of the destruction of the state civil service by Adeleke.

Lawal opined that the implication of the three-year service extension of the HoS by Adeleke is that other senior categories of officers that are due for retirement so soon like the state Accountant-General might start to lobby for extension of service for as many years as possible depending on the decibels of the cries of their respective communities.

He stated that the Accountant-General  might adopt the same strategy of this precedent created by hiring his community elders’ council to demand that he should continue in service beyond the time provided for in the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended).

The state APC chairman disclosed further that there is every propensity for the presence of  prejudice of discipline as those who competed for the position before the extension may start to witness undue victimisation by the retained HoS which information confirms that it is already happening under the watch of the grossly incompetent and sit-tight HoS.

In Lawal’s words: “Yielding to pressure of elders’ council of a town to extend the service of a career officer is a virtual destruction of the service.

“The civil service should be allowed for healthy competition so as not to create avoidable violence among the officers in the service.

“We, as a party, are not caught unawares by the latest happening in the state civil service as one does not need to be a soothsayer to state that the whirlwind of the maladministration of Governor Adeleke which has blown in some tertiary institutions in the state will continue its onslaught as long as the ineptitude and governor-by-proxy continues to occupy the driver’s seat in the political theatre of the state.

“It must be noted that many administrative lapses were witnessed under the watch of this Head of Service who had his service extended for additional three years.

“Let me call on the genuine stakeholders of the Osun State project that their silence in the haphazard manner that the push-and-start PDP governor has been running the affairs of this state as an extension of the Adeleke Dynasty private property will set the state back by many years among the comity of states in this country.

As stakeholders, we must, therefore, not fold our arms and keep quiet. Osun is our collective patrimony. We must rise up to the occasion,” Lawal stated.