Category: South West

Oyo State Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology Abdulrahman Abduraheem has denied insinuations that the government was planning to return some schools to their owners.

The commissioner, who clarified the government’s position in a statement at the weekend, said it at no time indicated its readiness to return schools to their owners.

He said the only recent event where Governor Seyi Makinde spoke about ownership of schools was at Loyola College during the inauguration of a hall named after Ondo State Governor Rotimi Akeredolu, where he advised members of the old students association to direct their request to the Ministry of Education.

Abduraheem said the government had drawn up a Memorandum of Understanding to guide the planned takeover of Government College, Ibadan (GCI), by the incorporated trustees of the GCI comprising old students association and government nominees, adding that the new regime of control at the college was meant to serve as a litmus test for template on the matter.

The Chairman, Senate Committee on Finance, Senator Solomon Adeola, has said Ogun State ex-governor Senator Ibikunle Amosun cannot play God in the state’s politics.

Adeola, the All Progressives Congress (APC) senatorial candidate for Ogun West in the 2023 general election, in a statement he issued yesterday, said: ”My attention has been drawn to reports credited to a statement made at the 50th anniversary of Abeokuta Club by Senator Ibikunle Amosun, erstwhile governor of Ogun State and APC senator representing Ogun Central, that the 2019 general election that saw the emergence of Prince Dapo Abiodun as the Ogun State governor was rigged and he is going to work against Prince Abiodun’s re-election in 2023.

”These invidious utterances would have been left unanswered as yet another ranting from a personality imbued with a sense of over bloated ego of messianic proportion in Ogun State politics. However, with 2023 general election around the corner, it is appropriate to join issues with a supposed APC member with a record of serial anti-party and anti-people tendencies aping to play God in the affairs of Ogun State.

”As a stakeholder in APC, Ogun State and the administration of Prince Abiodun, and by God’s grace and the will of the people, the senatorial candidate of Ogun West for the 2023 general election, I state with all emphasis that Senator Amosun shamefully dropped the ball in his assertion that the 2019 electoral victory of Prince Abiodun was rigged, even after the said election was judicially validated right up to the highest court of the land.

”The revolt of the people of Ogun State against this attempt to play God by a mere mortal was what saw to the surprise emergence of Prince Abiodun as the arrow head of a democratic struggle fully supported by genuine democrats in Ogun State. Our party, the APC, saw through the anti-democratic tendencies of their then governor and rightly threw their weight behind the people of Ogun State with Prince Abiodun emerging as the governor with majority votes against Senator Amosun’s acolyte, Adekunle Akinlade, foisted on misguided APC members in the race under another party, the Allied Peoples Movement (APM).

”To the glory of God, Prince Abiodun has discharged and is discharging his role as governor creditably to all sections of the state, in contrast to the sectional administration of Amosun in Ogun State. He is completing projects abandoned by Senator Amosun, while starting new ones across the three senatorial districts of the state.

”I use this medium to alert the National Working Committee of the APC to this anti-party activity of Senator Amosun in Ogun State and to henceforth be wary of his moves and suggestion on any matter. As it is, he is already plotting a repeat of APM against his party, the APC, in the days towards 2023. But genuine APC members are solidly behind Prince Abiodun as our governor and will support his re-election in 2023.”

Efforts to get Amosun’s reaction at press time were unsuccessful, as he did  not pick his calls.

A group, the Centre for Good Governance (CGG), has urged the police to invite the senator representing Ogun Central, Ibikunle Amosun, for questioning over his allegation that the 2019 governorship election that brought in Governor Dapo Abiodun was rigged in his (Abiodun’s) favour and that the perpetrators had apologised to him (Amosun).

Amosun, ex-Ogun State governor, made the allegations while receiving an award in Abeokuta at the weekend.

In a statement issued in Abuja yesterday and signed by its Organising Secretary, Akeem Olanrewaju, CGG said Amosun’s declaration was weighty and could not be swept under the carpet, enjoining the police to invite him to prove the veracity or otherwise of his claims.

The statement said Amosun made his claim, knowing as a federal lawmaker that election rigging was a felony and that the quest for the validation of the election in question went as far as the Supreme Court, which declared that Governor Abiodun won fair and square.

It added that the apex court’s position aligned with those of local and international observers that monitored the election, all of whom said that it conformed to laid-down rules and reflected the choice of voters.

It, therefore, urged the Ogun Central senator to tell Nigerians the facts in his possession which INEC, the apex court and local and international observers did not have.

The statement said: “Declarations or confessions about rigged elections touch on the very foundation of Nigeria’s democracy and can, therefore, not be swept under the carpet. The police should invite Amosun for questioning over his claim that election were rigged by some unnamed persons , and that the riggers apologised to him. Nigerians want to know the riggers so they could be taken care of by law before the 2023 elections.

“Unlike Amosun, Abiodun, the incumbent governor, did not have all the paraphernalia of government to swing votes in his favour. This include the arms and ammunition Amosun bought and stacked at the governor’s office which he released only after he and his surrogate lost the 2019 governorship election. Abiodun only came with the goodwill of the people of Ogun State with which he won the election. And as we all very well know, goodwill of the people win elections; it does not rig elections! This was clearly validated and laid to rest by the Supreme Court where Amosun had initially tried out this false allegation of election rigging.

“By claiming that the 2019 governorship election in Ogun State was rigged, Senator Amosun has not only cast aspersions on the integrity of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), he has also cast aspersions on the integrity of the Supreme Court, and the police and other security agencies who were visibly on ground on the day of the election.

“If indeed election riggers confessed to him and he refused to make such information known to the police, then he must be treated as an accessory after the fact and charged along with the felons that he referred to during his Abeokuta speech last Friday. The riggers must be disclosed. Consequently, the police must without hesitation invite him for questioning  in order to avert possible anarchy in Ogun State and save our democracy from crisis. And where he cannot substantiate the allegation, he must be brought to justice.

“It is certainly curious and unpardonable that election riggers confessed their misdeeds to Amosun, then the governor of the state, and he refused to report it to the police and the State Security Service that were at his beck and call for necessary action. This amounts to promotion of lawlessness and condone of same for which the police should hold Amosun to account

“Amosun definitely has a lot to tell Nigerians what he knows about the alleged rigging of the 2019 governorship election in Ogun State, when he knew it, and the perpetrators who had apologised to him. This is crucial to unravelling the crime he claimed was perpetrated by “the people” he referred to in the statement.”

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has said local production of cassava-based Sorbitol would strengthen the Naira.

It noted that production of Sorbitol would also help to reduce unemployment and over reliance on importation of the product, which is a natural sweetener extracted from glucose that drives agricultural revolution.

Speaking on behalf of CBN during the inauguration of the first cassava-based Sorbitol factory in Africa, Psaltry International Company Ltd, located at Ado-Awaye in Oke-Ogun area of Oyo State, the Director, Development and Finance department, Mr. Yusuf Yila, represented by Mr. Edwin Nzelu a deputy director in the department, said the apex bank funded the project.

Yila said the project was part of the bank’s developmental function, adding that Psaltry was one of the beneficiaries of CBN commodity development initiative, which he recalled was started in 2019 with 12 focal commodities, including cassava.

The Chief Executive Officer of Psaltry, Mrs. Oluyemisi Iranloye, said the company would create job for 10,000 youths in the community, adding that it would also indirectly impact on 100,000 people within 200km radius to the factory, covering more than 50 communities.

Red rail line will be completed in December and operational in the first quarter of 2023, Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu has said.

He spoke yesterday when he inspected work on the project.

The inspection covered Oyingbo, Agege, Ikeja, Mushin and Yaba axis.

Sanwo-Olu said the inspection was to ensure the deadline was met.

Accompanied by Deputy Governor Obafemi Hamzat and other members of the State Executive Council (SEC), the governor reaffirmed his conviction to complete the rail project by first quarter of 2023.

He said the contractor had assured the government that the physical infrastructure of the project would be completed by the end of December to allow for testing before full operation.

Sanwo-Olu said the Agege station would be walled off, to restrain trading activities, adding that traders around the Yaba rail corridor would be relocated.