A pro-democracy group, Democracy Vanguard, has threatened to drag the Osun State Government to court if it went ahead to constitute caretaker committees instead of conducting elections at the local government level in the State.
Speaking Wednesday on a radio programme in Osogbo, its Osun State Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Olowu stated that his organisation would not subscribe to the constitution of caretaker committees.
Olowu noted that the election at the local government level was a constitutional matter and that a delay meant that the Nigerian Constitution was no longer supreme.
He maintained that the position of the state government was not genuine and cannot hold ground.
While accusing political leaders in the country of not taking elections at the local government level serious, he stated that the South West had always been a pacesetter because it was the first region in the country to conduct elections in the local government.
Olowu revealed that from history, the state governments have been the ones frustrating the conduct of local government elections and Osun is not immuned.
In his words, “Rauf Aregbesola did the same. He introduced Parliamentary System which is also an aberration to the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
“There is a part of the Nigerian Constitution that states clearly that whatever law that is made at the state level, if it is not in tandem with the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is void.
“Why they basically set up caretaker committee is because the state governments loot the money of the local governments. Development has to come from the local governments.”
The legal adviser of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Adegoke Ogunsola had earlier explained that the COVID-19 pandemic, End-SARS protests, paucity of funds and the governor being meticulous were reasons the state government had not conducted elections at the local government.
Ogunsola disclosed that conducting an election at the local level would involve huge amount of funds and logistics, which the state government could not afford at the moment because it was more interested in developing the State since the citizens were yearning for more infrastructural developments.
He also revealed that the list of local government caretaker committee members would be made available before the end of the week.
Recall that the tenure of elected officials at the local government council areas in the state expired in February 2021 and since then the state government had appointed Council Managers to oversee their administration.
