Oyo PDP: Sacked council chairmen illegally elected

The Oyo State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has described sacked local government chairmen under the aegis of Association of Local Government of Nigeria (ALGON) as mere noise makers who wanted to benefit from illegalities.

The PDP in a statement by its Publicity Secretaty, Akeem Olatunji, said  ALGON members who were raising issues about Governor Seyi Mankinde’s proposed composition of the local governments leadership as swimming against the tide of public opinion.

According to the PDP, there is need to reconstitute the local governments and  the LCDAs, noting that the step will satisfy of the yearning of a majority of residents.

The statement reads: “As a party, the PDP wishes to tell the governor to ignore the latest rants of the sacked illegal council chairmen on the planned appointment, stating that it was another tactic to hold the people of the State to ransom by crippling governance at the grassroots.

“The sacked chairmen claiming to still be members of the Association of Local Government of Nigeria (ALGON) in Oyo State despite having been sacked legally had attacked Governor Makinde over a reported plan to appoint caretaker chairmen for local councils, a step which the PDP described as baseless noise-making that cannot hold water.”

The party  also maintained that the former chairmen’s ranting was medicine after death, because the circumstances that led to their sack were different from what they portrayed to the public, as they got into office through illegality and disobedience to court order.

The statement further reads: “Our attention has been drawing to the latest rants of some individuals who identify themselves, though illegally, as Association of Local Governments of Nigeria (ALGON) in which they tried to paint the Oyo State Governor, Engineer Seyi Makinde, in bad light over his reported plan to appoint interim management committees for local councils ahead of election into the councils.

Read Also: Oyo APC congratulates Seyi Makinde, thanks voters, party members

 

“We would like to place on record that the acclaimed spokesman of the Association, who signed the said statement and his fellow journeymen are impostors, who are attempting to deceive the unsuspecting members of the public.

“Ever since the illegal chairmen were caught up in the web of the law, Mr Abass Alesinloye and his co-travellers have become jobless irritants, acting like rambunctious children and looking for every opportunity to seek relevance, which has long left them following the exit of their party from government.

“While we consider it pedestrian and unsound for Alesinloye to take jibes at Governor Makinde, a man who has been above boards in his dealing and is becoming renowned as Mr Due Process and Mr Rule of Law, going by his unpartisan approach to the governance of Oyo State, we are quick to concede that expecting decorum from the APC will be asking for too much, as no one cannot give what he does not have.

“For the information of Alesinloye, who we suspect has been on a lone voyage of irresponsibility and noise-making, as other sacked chairmen with means of livelihood have since returned to their jobs, the people of Oyo State have been the ones yearning for government structure at the grassroots, with the latest testament to this being the shouts of “choose caretaker chairmen for local governments” at the House of Assembly chambers last Tuesday, when Governor Makinde was presenting the 2020 budget.”