The Osun State Government has accused the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) of orchestrating the illegal withholding of local government allocations in the state, warning that Osun people will “harshly punish” the APC at the polls for what it described as an “inhuman” act.
In a statement issued on Sunday, the spokesperson to Governor Ademola Adeleke, Mallam Olawale Rasheed, said the APC was “deliberately punishing the people and the performing Governor of Osun State” by blocking access to the funds.
“The Osun APC can therefore not hide under fake news any longer as the facts can no longer be twisted. As at today, there is no legal or political basis for the withholding of Osun State local government allocations,” Rasheed stated.
He cited the June 13, 2025 Court of Appeal judgement as having sustained the sack of former APC local government council chairmen and validated the February 22, 2025 local government elections, which brought in the current local government leadership across the state.
“The public is further in the know that the APC chairmen and councillors were sacked by two courts as early as 2022 and their removal was never reversed even by the misinterpreted Court of Appeal judgment of February 10, 2025,” Rasheed said. “We challenge the Osun APC to point out the exact portion of the February 10, 2025, judgment of the Appeal Court where an order for reinstatement was made.”
According to him, prior to the June ruling, the APC “made spirited efforts to breach the law by pushing for the payment of local government allocations to court-sacked APC chairmen” but such attempts “met brick walls on all fronts.”
Rasheed argued that even if the Supreme Court judgement on local government autonomy were to be applied, payment would still have to be made into accounts opened with the duly elected February 22 chairmen and accredited officials as signatories.
He also claimed President Bola Ahmed Tinubu was unaware of the fund seizure until reading about it in the Nigerian Tribune during the Eid holidays. “This means that the Attorney-General of the Federation instructed the Accountant-General of the Federation to withhold the funds without presidential approval,” he alleged, urging the President to “intervene and order the release of Osun local government allocations.”
The statement concluded with a warning to the opposition: “Osun APC should therefore retrace her anti-people posture and ensure immediate release of Osun allocation to the rightly elected leadership of the local governments… We must put APC on notice that Osun people will harshly punish them through the ballot for their willful inhuman punishment of Osun people.”
