By Afolabi Orekoya
“Tragic characters” can’t distract us
Our attention has been drawn to unnecessary virtuperations of Tunde Oladunjoye, who prides himself as the mouthpiece of the sinking All Progressives Congress (APC) and
and its government in Ogun State, wherein he attacked the person of frontline PDP governorship hopeful, Hon. (Dr) Oladipupo Adebutu. Ordinarily, we would not have dignified him with any kind of response, especially now that he is well known by the public as a rabble rouser and unserious individual with questionable character as aptly described by a former Governor of Ogun State, Otunba Gbenga Daniel, in his book titled “The Lion’s den.”
However, for the sake of unsuspecting members of the public, it is important to set the records straight and remind the rudderless mouthpiece of his battered personality and equally put him where he belongs as this perhaps might be the last time he would be lucky to have a response from us. This is because we are more focused and determined to judiciously spend our time on how to deliver the people of Ogun State from the shackles of the clueless government that Oladunjoye represents, that he had also acknowledged as a “weak government” in not less than two different occasions; we will not continue to trade words with him so that our case will not be like that of someone who had his clothes taken away from the bathroom by a mad man and started running after him; and both of them would be taken to be mad.
In his litany of falsehood, Oladunjoye who has a reputation of always blowing cold and hot at the same time; always talking from both sides of his mouth, should not have had any cause to react to the declaration speech of Hon. Adebutu if he was correct with his judgment on the declaration. For him to have reacted, it means something meaningful came out of the gubernatorial declaration of which he and his paymaster would still see much more when campaign proper starts.
It is so disheartening that Oladunjoye could not cover his face in shame and convert the energy he used to react on Monday to advise his boss, Mr Governor, on how to make Ogun State peaceful and address the growing insecurity leading to wanton killings across the state.
One other reason we will not be moved with Oladunjoye’s usual vituperation is what OGD said about him in his book. “In recommending Tunde Oladunjoye for removal as Chairman of Ijebu East LG Council, the Hon Justice Olukayode Somolu (rtd) Panel, which looked into the Ijebu-Ife mayhem while Oladunjoye was in office, stated inter alia: “..The Chairman, Ijebu East LGC, ….where the mayhem occurred, Mr Tunde Oladunjoye, has shown himself to be a very bad example of an elected public official. His conducts were not only appalling but morally reprehensible. Right from 1st Dec 2009, when the crisis erupted, resulting in such magnitude of loss of lives and property, he has not demonstrated an atom of human feeling for the constituents he was elected to serve….To say the least, Mr Tunde Oladunjoye is NOT A SUITABLE PERSON to hold any public office. We accordingly recommend that he be suspended from office forthwith…in addition, we hereby recommend the immediate arrest and investigation of Mr Tunde Oladunjoye by the Police….”. This clearly portends you are not a lover of peace.
For us, we would have thought that Oladunjoye would have deployed same energy with which he went on verbal onslaught to charge the state government on its criminal silence on the menace of cultism and avoidable violence which has become a daily routine in Ogun state.
Apart from failing to check violence, Oladunjoye should be reminded that the ruling APC government has refused to remit workers deductions since 2019. All appeals from different quarters to make the Dapo Abiodun government see reasons for immediate remittance of the workers entitlement have been largely rejected.
Oladunjoye also claimed that the government of Governor Dapo Abiodun has built and constructed many road projects in all the 20 Local Government areas. While we do not want to trade words, we expect Oladunjoye to be bold enough to name the Trunk B roads in each of the Local Government Areas across the state. Rather, Governor Abiodun enjoys working only on Trunk A roads because of huge refund from the Federal Government which would not be accounted for over the Trunk B roads which are primarily his responsibility. Likewise the Local Government Councils which ordinarily and constitutionally should cater for the council areas are in comatose and completely made useless by this government.
Moreover, we wonder why Oladunjoye chose to pretend as if he doesn’t know that the Abiodun-led government cannot provide potable water for members of public. As a fact, members of the public in Ogun Sate, particularly in Abeokuta metropolis (the seat of government) can bear honest witness of private individual’s intervention in this regard.
Without mincing words, Oladunjoye is a classical enabler of irresponsible government. Otherwise, he shouldn’t have forgotten that Ogun workers’ wellbeing deserves priority attention. It is a public knowledge that Pensioners in the state embarked on peaceful protest twice between September and November, 2021 in order to press home their legitimate entitlement having served the state meritoriously in different capacities. Till now, what has the present Government done to put smiles on the faces of these great patriots of our State.
We should ask Oladunjoye to tell us what significant achievement the APC government has made in sports? The Teachers’ recruitment scheme “OGUN Teach” that the outgoing government made so much noise about has not yielded anything. Some applicants that were given appointments letter over two years have not been given opportunity to resume work.
These are just few of the inadequacies of this government that one would expect Oladunjoye and his party to look into for the purpose of making things better; they ask themselves if what we have in Ogun State today is what they promised, anyway, what will one expect from an opportunist in position?
We, therefore, use this opportunity to advise Oladunjoye to retrace his steps and concentrate efforts on fixing his integrity issues before the right-thinking people of Ogun State rather than dissipating energy on Adebutu’s popular governorship quest.
