Osun Local Govt Fund Seizure: APC Mean No Well for Osun Workers, Traditional Rulers and Others

 Osun Local Govt Fund Seizure: APC Mean No Well for Osun Workers, Traditional Rulers and Others

By: Arewa Oluwaseun

The recent seizure of local government funds in Osun State by the All Progressives Congress (APC) is more than a fiscal misstep, it is gangsterism with a political mask, a very deliberate act of sabotage against the very soul of governance at the grassroots. At its core, local government allocations are constitutionally protected under Section 7 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) and are intended to guarantee autonomy, grassroots development and prompt service delivery. By obstructing these funds for six months, APC has not only undermined the statutory rights of workers, traditional rulers and local communities but also exposed its deep-seated disdain for democratic order and social justice.

From a governance standpoint, this act of fund seizure is symptomatic of a political culture that thrives on impoverishment. Local government councils are the bedrock of primary education, primary healthcare, rural infrastructure and welfare initiatives for ordinary citizens, blocking their access to resources means roads remain untarred, health centres lack basic drugs and community schools fall into ruin. Who suffers? The same Osun workers who depend on prompt salaries, the traditional rulers who maintain cultural cohesion at the grassroots and the vulnerable citizens already struggling under Nigeria’s harsh economic realities.

Beyond the economics lies a systemic erosion of institutional trust. When APC arrogates to itself the powers to decide the flow of constitutionally guaranteed funds, it is effectively rewriting the laws of federalism to favour political conquest rather than people’s welfare. This is not a mistake, it is strategy. Starve the councils, frustrate the workers, weaken the traditional authority and leave the populace beholden to a manipulative political class. It is a script of calculated wickedness.

Even more disturbing is the hypocrisy of APC’s rhetoric. Here is a party that loudly proclaims "grassroots empowerment" during campaigns, yet in practice, it strangles the same grassroots by cutting off their financial lifelines. Workers cannot be paid but our Governor is doing his best, monarchs cannot maintain palaces or community order and the councils cannot run their developmental agendas. This exposes APC as a party not guided by ideology or compassion, but by the crude instinct to dominate, control and punish.

Osun deserves better, the State’s economy is fragile, largely dependent on allocations from Abuja and modest internally generated revenue. When APC tampered with these local funds, it was equivalent to breaking the spinal cord of Osun’s rural economy. The ripple effect the APC wish for our dear state is devastating, they want unpaid salaries that will translate to weakened purchasing power, reduced market activity and heightened poverty. They want traditional rulers, who are custodians of peace, to be stripped of their statutory entitlements, making them vulnerable to ridicule and irrelevance. This in turn breeds insecurity, as communal leaders lose the moral authority to intervene in disputes or guide their subjects.

History is unkind to such recklessness and Osun people will not forget. Workers know who delayed their pay; monarchs know who attempted to diminish their dignity; and market women know who dried up their patronage. APC has demonstrated in plain terms that it means no well for Osun workers, no well for traditional rulers and no well for the citizens. What it means well for is its own insatiable appetite for power at the expense of the governed.

The time has come for Osun citizens to reject this anti-people posture. Silence in the face of this injustice would be complicity. The people must unite, not just in condemnation but in active resistance, to ensure that grassroots democracy is not strangled by a party that thrives on poverty and thrives on disunity. The seizure of local government funds is not merely a financial issue, it is a moral and existential question for Osun’s future.

APC has by this action, proven itself as an enemy of progress and a stumbling block to Osun’s development. We need not be surprised, Osun people have long known that the APC means no well for them. From time immemorial, the party’s history in the state has been written in hardship and betrayal. It began in the dark days of Chief Bisi Akande under the Alliance for Democracy (AD), which later metamorphosed into today’s even darker APC. That was when the anti-workers posture and the general wickedness of a callous political group first took root in Osun.

The pattern continued under the eight wasted years of Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola’s misrule, where debts, abandoned projects and suffering became the order of the day. And it did not stop there. In the Alhaji Gboyega Oyelola era, Osun workers endured perhaps the darkest chapter when backlogs of half salaries from the so-called “modulated salaries” were never paid. This long history makes it clear that APC has never been a friend of Osun’s workers, never been a partner of its traditional rulers and never been a builder of the state’s future. What it represents is a legacy of exploitation, deceit and cruelty that Osun people must never forget.

Any political structure that subjects its people to calculated starvation and humiliation cannot be trusted with the destiny of the state. Osun workers, traditional rulers and the citizenry must therefore take a definitive stand, APC means no well and Osun must say Never and Never Again.