Osun APC carpets Adeleke over extension of HoS employment by 3 years

The Osun State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has condemned the three-year extension in service of the state Head of Service, Mr Samuel Ayanleye Aina, by the state Governor Ademola Adeleke, describing it as unprecedented and a crass administrative aberration.

The Governor has announced the extention of the tenure of the Head of Service till 2026.

Adeleke, in a statement by his spokesperson, Mallam Olawale Rasheed, said the extension was to deepen and conclude ongoing reform and revitalization of the civil service.

But while reacting to the development, 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, on Sunday , stated that the scenario marks the beginning of the destruction of the state civil service by Adeleke.

He said, to the surprise of all and sundry, the HoS whose retirement date was January 24th, 2024, has his service extended by three years by the state Governor Adeleke without caring for a jolt about the injury his fiat would have on the extension, adding that it is capable of triggering a revolt in the state civil service.

According to him, the news of some of the elders from Ifedayo Local Government Council Area of Osun State, where the HoS hails from, made a case for the service extension of their son, Aina, went viral few days ago.

He noted 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.

Lawal 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 victimization by the retained HoS which information confirms that it is already happening under the watch of the grossly incompetent and sit-tight HoS.

His 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.