‘How Osun Judicial Workers’ Strike Backfired against Adeleke’s Govt’

Yinka Kolawole in Osogbo

The Osun State chapter of All Progressives Congress (APC) has cautioned the state Governor, Ademola Adeleke to desist from “treating ringworm when it’s obvious to all that his administration is being plagued by leprosy which amounts to self-destruction.”

The governor last week announced the willingness of his administration to end the over three-month-old lingering strike of the state chapter of the judicial workers over the tenure of the state Chief Judge, Justice Adepele Ojo, “when it was audible to the deaf, visible to the blind that the Adeleke administration has been the promoter and sponsor of the strike in order to get at the state Chief Judge.”

A renowned constitutional lawyer, Ebun-Olu Onagboruwa, last week raised some germane legal issues in his article on the constitutional lacunae created in the state through the strike.

 In his remark, the Osun State Chairman of the APC, Sooko Tajudeen Lawal, in a statement issued by the party’s Director of Media and Information, Chief Kola Olabisi, yesterday told Adeleke that his administration would not be devoid of challenges as long as he is running the government as his private enterprise with its headquarters in his family’s Ede country home.

 Lawal queried Adeleke on why he hurriedly announced his willingness to be instrumental to end the over three-month-old judicial staff strike which he said has paralysed all the courts in the state immediately Onagboruwa pointed out the copious unconstitutional activities of Adeleke through the state JUSUN endless strike last week.

The state APC chairman stated that his party wholeheartedly identified with all the submissions of the legal luminary about the ongoing strike of the state  judicial staff.

Lawal explained that it is incontrovertible, according to Onagboruwa, that: “In the event of failure, inability or unwillingness by the Osun State Governor, Adeleke, to restore law and order in the state by opening the courts for the performance of their constitutional functions, Section 304(1) C-F  of the Constitution permits the president to declare a state of emergency in any state of the federation where there is clear and present danger of an actual breakdown of public order and public safety requiring extra-ordinary measures to avert danger.

“There cannot be public order or public safety in any part of the federation such as Osun State where the entire judiciary is shut down and there are no lawful means to resolve grievances by the public.

“I have wondered how Governor Adeleke was able to present the 2024 budget estimate to the House of Assembly without the input of the judiciary of Osun State, the Chief Judge being the Chief executive of that indispensable arm of government.”