APC to Adeleke: Apologize to Osun pensioners for not keeping your campaign promise

Osun State chapter of the All Progressives Congress, APC, has asked Governor Ademola Adeleke to tender an apology to the pensioners in the State for disappointing them in his campaign promise.

The Osun APC revealed that Adeleke promised to pay up the backlog of contributory pensions within six months of his assumption of office.

In a statement by Tajudeen Lawal, the State chairman of the party on Thursday in Osogbo, he claimed that the Adeleke-led government was fraught with deceit in the execution of its campaign promises.

“The information about the mere approval for the payment of the N2.1bn CPS bond for the retirees showed that the Adeleke administration is lacking in the sincerity of purpose as the so-called pension bond would be the second time of such in about nine months in the life of the PDP administration in the State.

“If Adeleke does not have anything to hide, he should separate the figures his government is allocating to the primary school teachers, to the civil servants, retired employees in the parastatals, secondary school teachers who retired,” he said.

Tajudeen alleged that the Governor Adeleke-led administration had something to hide.

“If we calculate N500m for the state alone in nine months for the Contributory Pension Scheme, it amounts to N4.5bn.

“If we calculate the same for the local governments, it is N4.5bn, making the total that the Adeleke administration is due for, at the minimum, to be N9bn.

“If Adeleke pays N500m continuously in 48 months of his tenure, he can only pay N24bn at the end of his tenure which is a far cry to the outstanding liabilities at the state and the local government levels.

“For nine months now, Adeleke has been able to pay less than N4bn plus the local government liabilities of the pension. If we divide 48 months by four times, he would only be able to pay N12bn in four years of his tenure.

“The immediate-past Governor Oyetola paid the Contributory Pension Scheme of the civil servants, parastatals and secondary school retirees on the CPS from 2016 to April 2018 and paid in full all the retirees on the CPS whose bonds were between N100K and N2m in full till December 2020.

“In all, despite the poor state of finances, the Oyetola administration paid over N40 billion to settle pensions and N97 billion from the state indebtedness.

“Why is it difficult or impossible for Governor Adeleke to paste the names of the beneficiaries of the questionable pension bonds as it was the practice during his predecessor’s tenure if truly he has nothing to hide?

“Now that the local government councils are buoyant, why is Adeleke wasting their funds on phantom contracts instead of releasing chunk funds to these hapless retirees to save their lives and jump-start the economy of the state by releasing their bond certificates as he promised to do within six months in his campaign promise?”

The Osun State Government, had through a statement by the state Head of Service, Samuel Aina on Wednesday revealed that the Adeleke administration had approved the release of bond certificates worth N2.1bn for the payment of accrued right benefits of another batch of retirees under the Contributory Pension Scheme at the state and local government levels.