Osun APC warns against PDP takeover of LG secretariats

The Osun State chapter of the All Progressives Congress on Sunday warned of an impending crisis over an alleged plan by the state government to install officials elected in the February 21 local government election into the council secretariats across the state.

Addressing journalists in Osogbo on behalf of the leadership of the party, ex-Osun information commissioner, Mr Sunday Akere, said Governor Ademola Adeleke’s administration planned to actualise its plan using an order of the court.

Akere, who was flanked by the ex-member of Osun State House of Assembly, Olatunbosun Oyintiloye, ex-commissioner for local government and chieftaincy, Adebayo Adeleke, and ex-special adviser to the governor, Jamiu Olawumi, said the government was working towards getting a judgment from an Osun State High Court sitting in Ikirun on April 17, 2025.

The ex-commissioner said the plan to use the order of mandamus from the court to bring the chairmen elected on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party to the council secretariats currently being controlled by court-reinstated APC chairmen and councillors with the aid of Amotekun Corps and hoodlums may lead chaos.

Responding to the allegations in a statement, the spokesperson to the Osun State Governor, Olawale Rasheed, described APC’s allegations as mere blackmail.

He noted that the party was afraid of imminent backlash over its illegal occupation of local government secretariats.

Rasheed added that the APC was currently facing three lawsuits over alleged invasion of the local government secretariats, saying the elected chairmen and councillors of PDP in the February 21 poll under All Local Government of Nigeria and the state local government workers under the National Union of Local Government Employees are two of the cases.

He further said the third matter was filed by the All Peoples Party, which sued the APC for contempt of court for ignoring a subsisting court judgment which sacked its chairmen elected in the October 15, 2022, local government election.

“In all these cases, Governor Adeleke did not and has no intention of instituting any court action after his directive to the PDP elected chairmen and councillors to abide by the rule of law and avoid violence,” Rasheed said

But Akere insisted that the plot to bring PDP chairmen into its LG secretariats may throw the state into a fresh round of unrest.

He declared the readiness of the party to resist any illegal means to hijack the council from its chairmen.

“The joker the Governor Adeleke-led government is banking on is to engage in a judicial coup by procuring mandamus orders for the illegal local government council chairmen and councillors from a High Court judge in Ikirun on the 17th day of April 2025.

“The illegal local council chairmen and councillors who have been staying off the councils would seek the mandamus order from the High Court against Governor Adeleke who subsequently would not object but rather prevail on the already stationed Amotekun Corps with daredevil thugs to invade the council secretariats across the state with maximum force.

“In the arrangement by Governor Adeleke and his allies, the illegally elected council chairmen and councillors would be accompanied by council workers—who have been staying away from the secretariats—to the various councils, a move that could trigger pandemonium and chaos across the state,” Akere said.

The chieftain also said APC had earlier petitioned the National Judicial Council on the alleged judicial rascality being encouraged by the Adeleke-led administration.

Rasheed, dismissing the APC’s threat to resist any planned resumption by the PDP, said the party’s “plot to deploy violence in support of the court-sacked Yes/No chairmen is mere fantasy and a failed attempt to evade the legal consequences of their unconstitutional and reprehensible occupation of local government secretariats across Osun State.”

He called on Osun APC to face its legal battle and leave the governor “out of its self-imposed and self-inflicted moral, legal and political injuries.