Written by Seyi Bakare
There is an unmistakable silliness running through the piece “Governor Dapo Abiodun and the Gift of Greece”, allegedly written by Femi Orebe and posted on the online platform Apple’s Bite. This is a reinvention of a long-debunked lie applied to discredit current good behavior. The author states that the situation of Nigeria’s LGs has not changed since the Supreme Court’s decision granting them fiscal autonomy, but blames this on the Ogun State governor. He had bile and roaring anger, but in his sane mind he had incredible intelligence, common sense, and education. This is a heap of rubbish like “Bolekaja” concocted by drowned politicians’ errands, so if you want to read it on Nairaland, which is one of the sites where the anti-Abiodun brigade regularly consoles itself with blatant falsehoods and defamations that are never published on real media platforms, this article has been published on many platforms under various titles, and the title is “Local Government Autonomy, Dapo Abiodun and Tinubu.”
Although the author gratuitously states that Governor Dapo Abiodun is “smiling at party meetings” while systematically undermining the Supreme Court-guaranteed autonomy that the president staked his legacy on, he does not cite a shred of evidence to support his bilious claim, confident in his patron Abiodun deranged syndrome who ran Ogun State like a common thug. Even if his memory bleeds, he must surely remember that his fellow traveler, Mr. Wale Adedayo, in August 2023, claimed that the Dapo Abiodun government had hijacked Ogun LG funds and that LGs in the state had been zeroed out in allocations from the federation account since 2021, relying on public fears about the governor rather than solid evidence to substantiate his claims. The Abiodun government released a retraction document showing that the governor had not touched a penny of the LG’s funds or signed their accounts, leaving Adedayo with nothing but his own arguments.
Appearing at the State House premises, the body statutorily mandated to disburse LG funds in Ogun State, namely the Joint Account Allocation Committee (JAAC), declared that all funds approved by the committee during its monthly meetings were always routed through various LG accounts. It said that the process of fund management always takes place at monthly meetings attended by the Secretary of Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs and his Permanent Secretary, the 20 LG Chairmen, the Treasurer, the Provincial Treasurer, the Chairman and Secretary of the NULGE, representatives of the Provincial Traditional Councils, the Local Civil Service Commission, the Local Government Pensions Authority, and representatives of the LG Pensioners. Mr. Adedayo attended 15 JAAC meetings during his 26 months as president of LG, but during that time he did not say anything about the zero allocation. And further, in lieu of criminal hijacking of LG funds, the Ogun JAAC admitted that the Abiodun government was actually increasing revenue from the federal account during the coronavirus crisis. This is because the income could not even cover front-line expenses. In 2020, LG had a budget of N43.121 billion for frontline charges, but only N34.75 billion came from the federal account, leaving a deficit of N6.619 billion. In 2021, it earned N38.723 billion while frontline toll payments amounted to N47.845 billion. In 2022, N54.182 billion was required to be paid as line charges, but the federal account provided only N47.845 billion, leaving a deficit of N17.4 billion by January 2023. Mr. Abiodun did not want the grassroots people to suffer, so he decided to help!
As Ogun students attending tertiary institutions at the time will surely remember, Abiodun gave them N50,000 to tide them over. He also gave money to elementary and middle school students, but the funds were routed through their parents. He introduced CNG buses, bicycles and tricycles long before President Tinubu assumed office and announced the removal of subsidies, claiming that they would be cheaper to operate/use and would leave the people of Ogun with higher disposable income. Now, two years later, the spitballs of corrupt political pirates pretending to write poetry and demagogic words (“In the Abeokuta sun the car shone, the metal paint catching the light like a promise wrapped in cellophane”) are using Governor Abiodun’s gift of SUVs to the LG chairman and others on Christmas Day to revive the lie to discredit the governor among the people. What a depraved clown! !
*Bakare submitted this article via seyibakre@gmail.com
