By KOLA OLABISI
Queer and bizzaire happenings shall never cease to rear their ugly heads in Osun State since Governor Ademola Adeleke's government was inaugurated two weeks ago.
It would be recalled that the nation's electoral umpire, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), declared Adeleke the winner of the July 16, 2022 governorship election in the state.
Since his declaration, Adeleke as the governor-elect had been issuing illegal directives to financial institutions and the civil servants not to honour the directives of the then sitting Governor Gboyega Oyetola even when the latter had constitutional power and authority to function till 12 midnight of November 26, 2022 when the mantle of government would legally shift to the new governor under the aegis of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
It was indeed a period when confusion set in in the state as some of the top civil servants fell flat to the illegal directives of Adeleke as the governor-elect.
A reference point is the Accountant-General of the state, one Mr Rasheed Olalere Alabi, who threw professional ethics and etiquettes to the wind by romancing and taking illegal directives from the governor-elect to the detriment of the sitting governor.
Investigation also showed that the heavily compromised Accountant-General who was ignoring the phone calls of the then Governor Oyetola temporarily moved his base to a higher institution in Ede from where he was doing the financial hatchet job for the then governor-elect for about ten days.
This was the reason the signed salary schedule of the civil and public servants by Oyetola since November 20, 2022 was not attended to by Alabi which is the current reason why some civil and public servants are yet to be paid their November salaries.
This is just by the way. The ugly scenes that are stranger than fiction in Osun State are the situations whereby the political thugs loyal to the ruling PDP were celebrating the transfer of the state commissioner of police, Mr Faleye Sunday Olaleye.
Pockets of the political hoodlums were sighted along some streets in Osogbo, the state capital, yesterday chanting anti-Olaleye's songs.
The Ekiti State-born former state Commissioner of Police who was in the saddle for less than two months is a brilliant and no-nonsense police officer whose short stint witnessed unprecedented caging, arresting and relocation of criminals from Osun State.
Information has it that Olaleye succeeded in arresting and prosecuting some of the dare-devil political hoodlums who, hitherto, had been disturbing the reigning peace in the state.
It was learnt that the hurried transfer of the CP within two months of his posting was teleguided and orchestrated by the power that be in the political circle of Osun State who are not comfortable with his dispassionate approach to his professional calling.
It is on record that the former CP Olaleye swept the state clean of undesirable elements as a sizeable number of them are cooling off at Correctional centres, others still being prosecuted while not less than 400 guns that illegally found their way into the Osun public through political terrorism have been confiscated by the eagle-eyed quintessential police chief.
That was perhaps the reason why the political hoodlums took to the streets to celebrate the transfer of the hyperactive CP.
True to type, Osun State has started to slide into an haven of attacks by political thugs since the transfer of Olaleye as there have been cases of pulling down of the structures of perceived political foes without court order and attacks of members of political parties that are not PDP in the state.
The newly-posted commissioner of police too should perform his statutory duties without fear or favour in accordance with the Acts guiding the force.
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Credit| OLABISI is the Osun State APC Media Director*