Declare State of Emergency in Osun, SDP Tells Buhari

Declare State of Emergency in Osun, SDP Tells Buhari

 Osun State Chapter of Social Democratic Party (SDP) has urged President Muhammadu Buhari to declare a state of emergency in the state following the present high level of untimely deaths, hungers and poverty ravaging the people of the state.

 In a statement by the Chairman of the party, Chief Ademola Ishola, which was made available to media today, the party disclosed that information at its disposal showed that over 510 retirees in the state died in the last 18 months waiting for their entitlements.

 He noted uncountable numbers of the state workers lost their lives to avoidable deaths in the last one year due financial difficulties while many of them who have been confined to half salaries by the state Governor, Rauf Aregbesola in the last eight months are dying in silence.

 According to him, many of the ill 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 will 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 leadership, 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 federation, Osun is the only state that for two months (November and December 2015) received minus allocations while the January allocation of the state was as low as N6.2million for a population of over five million people.

 “We must not pretend that all is well with the state.  Indeed, the 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 in 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.”