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Oyo: We’re ready to defend our mandate, sacked LG bosses tell Makinde

David Adenekan
David Adenekan
Oyo: We’re ready to defend our mandate, sacked LG bosses tell Makinde
ALGON

We are ready to defend our mandate, local government chairmen under the auspices of Association of Local Government of Nigeria, ALGON, sacked by Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State, have declared.

They described as an act of illegality, executive rascality and an affront to the judiciary and the rule of law, the plan to appoint caretaker chairmen and sole administrators to the 33 local government areas and 35 local council development areas of the state.

The council bosses who spoke at a press conference held in Ibadan, while assuring that they would defend their mandate, said the plan was the governor’s own way of breaking the peace and returning the state to the old days of lawless politics of thuggery.

Governor Makinde had through his Chief of Staff, Chief Bisi Ilaka, said the state would soon appoint caretaker chairmen into all the 33 councils and sole administrators into the 35 development areas ahead of the council polls to be conducted by the first quarter of 2020.

Oyo State ALGON chairman, Prince Ayodeji Abass-Aleshinloye, speaking at the press conference, where all the sacked council bosses and councillors across the state were present, said Makinde would be making history as the first governor to breach the NFIU guideline with the move.

He warned that any attempt by the governor to impose the caretaker committees on the councils when the appeal the state government filed was yet to be heard and a perpetual restraining order against dissolution of elected council administration was still subsisting, “will be considered as the final push that will exhaust our patience.”

According to him, “We will be very ready to defend our mandates popularly given by the people who elected us into position of responsibility. You do not sit on a chair that is not vacant except court clears the seat for you or you take the seat by force, a recipe for violence and lawlessness.

“We, the elected chairmen and councillors as members of ALGON, Oyo State, have been seeking all constitutional and peaceful means to correct this illegal act of Governor Makinde, but it is now very clear that the government has decided, out of its own volition, to be deaf and dumb to all voices of reason and wisdom in its flagrant disobedience of court order and it is in an hurry to push Oyo State into a state of anomie, a lawless state where the rule of men not rule of law reigns.

“ALGON has resolved at our last meeting that in the event of an invasion of the Council secretariats by the Seyi Makinde Forces of Occupation, we will be more than ready to defend the councils and the sanctity of the people’s mandate freely given to us.

“All elected local government chairmen and councillors are hereby put on notice and be at alert anytime the governor makes his final push. Where tradition is lacking, a striking example is very necessary. Action and reaction are equal and opposite.”

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