Osun State government has reaffirmed its commitment to financial discipline, saying news from the opposition in an online platform which accused the government of recklessness in public expenditure was nothing but a misrepresentation of facts.
The state’s commissioner for Information and Public Enlightenment, Oluomo Kolapo Alimi, pointed out that the state government fingered such false reports with headlines as Adeleke blew N38bn in 21 months; splashed N8bn on vehicles in 2024; zero funding for gratuity, pension arrears among others as false.
He reiterated that the Osun State government took a significant step towards fiscal accountability and transparency by making its budget implementation report accessible to the public on its official website as part of efforts to promote sustainability and open governance.
“On the allegation of huge expenses on vehicle purchase, the public is first reminded of how the Oyetola team carted away all government vehicles in 2022, making it imperative for the government to purchase vehicles for statewide operations.
“This N8 billion figure represents the cumulative procurement of vehicles by the Bureau of General Services for all Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) to replace those carted away by the previous administration whose worth was ₦4,384,838,696.39 as at then and which ordinarily would have costed ₦18,488,312,413.88 to replace given the current value of the naira.
“On pension and gratuity arrears, the current administration inherited a huge sum of ₦35bn pension and gratuity arrears from the previous administration and within just two years, the Adeleke Administration had cleared four years’ worth of ₦16.2bn pension and gratuity arrears spanning 2017 to 2020,” he said in a statement.
Alimi urged the public to ignore agents of fake news and to further fact-check the preceding submissions from the state government to reaffirm that the current administration has shown exceptional prudence in resource management, outperforming its predecessor despite today’s challenging global economic landscape.
