My dear Banks,
I am compelled to respond to you because in your attempt to address the issues raised in my last piece, you came for my person. It is not your first time. I will, therefore, not wait for the third time before placing you where you belong.
In my piece “Testing the will of the court: Who are Gov. Adeleke’s Advisers?” I asked the question deliberately because I was convinced that if our Governor had good and sound advisers around him, he certainly would have avoided some of the traps he fell into in the ongoing struggle for the control of Local Government in our dear state.
However, after reading your piece, where with your level of education and exposure, you say it was right for our Governor to have approached the state High Court against a subsisting ruling of an Appeal Court, insisting that his action was “rooted in legal precedents,” I now understood better, the reasons for some of the missteps of the poor man. If this is the kind of counsel you provide for our Governor, then, we need not look further for why we are in the mess we are in, in Osun.
But before I proceed to address other issues you raised, let me deal with the one concerning my person. Banks, you cannot pontificate about integrity, where I am. I am sure if your employers know as much as I know about your fraudulent past, where you enrolled your wife and several others as ghost workers in a bid to defraud the system, they probably would not have entrusted you with your current position as a Special Adviser to Governor Ademola Adeleke on SDG & Multilateral Relations. Only a greedy Public official on a salary of about a million naira, back then, would still place the wife who is abroad on a salary of N150, 000. I sure do not have such an unenviable record.
To suggest that the opinion piece I authored in your myopic thinking is an attempt by me “to try to cozy yourself with your former boss, Oyetola, who did not deem it fit to offer you employment as his aide in ministry of Marine and Blue Economy. And who will blame him? Your performance as always being subpar, one of the reasons the incumbent lost re-election woefully,” is silly and laughable. To start with, I was duly engaged as an aide of the Honourable Minister, and I earned my monthly pay, including estacodes until December when I officially returned to The Sun to advance my career. As a matter of fact, my former Principal, Oyetola, like my first Principal, Ekweremadu, reluctantly released me because it was about career growth. If I was performing below par like you claimed, Oyetola would certainly have dispensed with me immediately after we left Osun in November, 2022.
Banks, seriously, I had thought the pedestrian argument of yours that I caused Oyetola to purportedly lose an election could only come from an uninformed, unintelligent and vain thinking person. I was, therefore, shocked that you could bring yourself to that level. But I can confirm to my readers that you were removed from the media team of the then President of the Senate, His Excellency, Dr. Bukola Saraki, as a result of the ghost workers’ scam involving your wife, EFCC issues, incompetence, and personal aggrandizement among other issues. See, don’t deep your filthy hands in my mouth. If you do, I will bite them off and they may never be useful to you again. If I am not good, His Excellency, Dr. Saraki will not want to hire me in 2018.
Stay on issues when engaging in public discourse, especially with someone like me. For if you go personally, I have the capacity to confront you with hard facts on your questionable records of service.
Now on the issues at hand, Prince Lateef Fagbemi offered a professional service. And he has demonstrated his impartiality by raising the red flag when an APC government in Edo State sacked elected council officials. He told the governor pointedly that it was illegal and unconstitutional. But what will you say of the Chairman of Osun State electoral body, Hashim Abioye, my very good friend and brother, a card-carrying member of the PDP and who until his appointment was a Special Adviser to the Governor on Legal Matters? In fact, when he was appointed, I congratulated him and sent him a message asking him, if he was to be on the other side and such appointment happened, would he in all honesty say it was proper? He only responded to the prayers and till date, he is yet to respond to that poser. Remove the specs in yours eyes before thinking of removing those of others, please.
On the APP suit, I had addressed it previously. But let me reinstate here that jurisdiction is very fundamental in any litigation. The Appeal Court position is that the Federal High Court has no jurisdiction to entertain the suit in the first instance. By implication, the APP judgement cannot stand. Assuming without conceding that there is an APP judgement, the mere fact there is an application before the court to relist it presupposes that the matter is still pending before the court. To that extent therefore, the only subsisting judgement with regards to the matter is the judgement of February 10, 2025 from the Appeal Court. To rush to a State High Court to procure a judgement and hide under it to conduct an election, shows your government knows that it is in a fix. I will advise that you guys approach the Supreme Court, if indeed you want to return to court and not a court lower than an Appeal Court.
Finally, I can excuse you because you are not a trained journalist. There is a world of difference between my personal opinion, which was what I expressed in the piece you attempted to react to and the stories I do for The Sun Newspapers.
I come in piece.
Omipidan, a journalist, and author of ‘Persona Non Grata,’ writes from Abuja.
Regrets Loss Off Lives Orchestrated By State Agents The Osun State Chapter of the All…
… Perfected Plan To Announce Illegal Council Officials It is obvious that the current administration…
Alhaji Bello Adegboyega Basheer (BABS), the immediate past Managing Director of the Osun Public Procurement…
The Convener of Eniade Foundation, Hon. Eniade Damilare has felicitated with a frontline leader of…
Resurgence of wonderful happenings took place yesterday, 21st February, 2025, in Osun State when the…
THIS Friday, Nigeria Police Force raised a red flag over the planned local government elections…