Governor Abiodun and the Ogun LG Blackmailers

By Seyi Bakare

There is an unmistakable idiocy that runs through the piece, “Governor Dapo Abiodun and His Greek Gift”, supposedly written by a Femi Orebe and published in an online platform, Apple’s Bite: it is the reinvention of a long debunked falsehood applied to discredit a current good gesture. The writer says that the situation in Nigeria’s LGs has not changed since the Supreme Court judgement that granted them financial autonomy, but then blames this on the Ogun State Governor. He had bile and roaring rage, but did not have the intellect, decency or education to sound remotely believable to a sane mind. Because it is a ‘Bolekaja’ pile of garbage concocted by an errand boy of a drowning politician, the piece is published on many platforms under different titles and if you want to read it on Nairaland, one of the sites where the anti-Abiodun brigade regularly comforts itself with blatant falsehoods and libel that will never be published on real media platforms, the title is: “Local government autonomy, Dapo Abiodun and Tinubu.”

The writer says, gratuitously, that Governor Dapo Abiodun “smiles at party meetings” while systematically frustrating the autonomy the Supreme Court has guaranteed and the President has staked his legacy upon, but he cites not a shred of evidence to back up his bilious claim, confident in the Abiodun Derangement Syndrome of his patron god who ran Ogun State like a common thug. Even if his memory has suffered a haemorrhage, surely he must remember that his co-traveller, Wale Adedayo, who in August 2023 alleged that the Dapo Abiodun government had hijacked Ogun LG funds, and that the LGs in the state had been receiving zero allocation from the Federation Account since 2021, relied on public angst against governors instead of hard evidence to make his case. As the Abiodun government published retractions indicating that the Governor had never touched a dime of LG funds, and was no signatory to their account, Adedayo had only his allegations as ammunition.

During an appearance on the state House of Assembly grounds, the body statutorily mandated with disbursing LG funds in Ogun State, namely the Joint Account and Allocation Committee (JAAC), declared that every fund approved by the committee during its monthly meetings had always passed through the various LG accounts. According to it, the process of fund administration always takes place at a monthly meeting attended by the Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs and his Permanent Secretary, the 20 LG chairmen, Commissioner for Finance, State Accountant General, President and Secretary of NULGE, representatives of Traditional Councils in the State, Local Government Service Commission, Bureau of Local Government Pension and representatives of LG pensioners, amongst others. In the 26 months that he served as LG boss, Adedayo had attended JAAC meetings 15 times, and had said nothing about zero allocation in that period. And, what is more, instead of a criminal hijack of LG funds, the Ogun JAAC confirmed that the Abiodun government had actually augmented their earnings from the Federation Account during the COVID-19 crisis because those earnings could not even take care of first line charges! In 2020, the LGs, which had a N43.121bn budget for first line charges, got only N34.750 billion from the Federation Account, leaving a deficit of N6.619 bn. In 2021, they got N38.723 bn, while payment for first line charges was put at N47.845 bn. In 2022, they needed to pay N54.182 billion as line charges but the Federation Account only provided N47.845 bn, leaving a deficit of N17.4 bn by January 2023. Not wanting the people at the grass roots to suffer, Abiodun decided to help out!

Surely, as Ogun students in tertiary institutions at the time would remember, Abiodun gave each of them N50,000 to tide them over. He also gave primary and secondary students money, but he channeled it through their parents. He rolled out CNG buses, bikes and tricycles long before President Tinubu assumed office and announced the removal of subsidy, arguing they would leave the Ogun people with higher disposable income because they are cheaper to run/use. Now, two years later, a corrupt lickspittle of political pirates pretending to write poetry but unable to escape the language of demagoguery (“The vehicles gleamed under the Abeokuta sun, their metallic paint catching the light like promises wrapped in cellophane”) is using Governor Abiodun’s presentation of SUVs to LG chairmen on Christmas Day to resurrect a lie in order to discredit the people’s Governor. What a depraved clown!!

*Bakare sent this piece through seyibakre@gmail.com