Osun State chapter of Social Democratic Party (SDP) has advised President Muhammadu Buhari to declare a state of emergency in Osun following the present high level of deaths, hungers and poverty ravaging the people of the state. In a statement on Monday, March 28, 2016, by the Chairman, Chief Ademola Ishola, the party disclosed that over 510 retirees in the state died in the last 18 months waiting for their entitlements.
He pointed out that apart from the high death rate in the state, workers, who had been forced to receive half salaries in the last eight were not finding it funny. According to him, many of the sick people in the state, who cannot afford private hospitals, since the public own have been ineffective since that sack of all the medical doctors, have now resorted to trado-medical centres for help.
The SDP chairman stated that the state would totally collapse economically and socially if Aregbesola is allowed to continue in office beyond July this year. Ishola lamented that the present woeful allocation of funds from the Federation Account accrued to the state “has shown that we cannot recover again from this mess under Aregbesola, hence, the need for the All Progressives Congress (APC) led government at the centre to declare a state of emergency in the state.
“In the whole of the federation, Osun is the only state that for two months (November and December 2015) it received minus allocations while the January allocation of the state was as low as N6.2 million for a population of over five million people.
“We must not pretend that all is well with Osun. Indeed, all is now well as this state is almost ruined by Aregbesola’s government. Today, this state took a bailout of N34.9 billion which we will not finish paying until 2035, the rescheduled debt by Debt Management Office (DMO) of N88 billion is still there and several billions of naira being owed many of Aregbesola’s contractors.
“Businesses are folding up in the state, many able-bodied beggars are now parading streets of major towns of the state and the state secretariat is now a ghost centre as many workers cannot afford transport fare to their various offices.
“Education is at its lowest ebb as woeful performances of the school pupils had forced the governor to set up a panel to investigate failures of public school students in external examinations.
“The end of this pathetic problem is not on sight. Even if the government decides to take levies and taxes, residents of the state are too poor to pay.
“Our problem in this state is caused by Aregbesola’s appetite for debt, financial mismanagement and corruption because our state was better off before 2010 when he was forced on us by Justice Clara Ogunbiyi led Appeal Court judgment”, Ishola stated.
The SDP chief urged Buhari to save the over five million innocent people of the state including children, women and the elderly from total annihilation from the hand of Aregbesola.
The party further threatened that in case Buhari refuses to act timely, SDP will forward Aregbesola’s alleged atrocities to International Criminal Court (ICC).
