Unpaid Salaries: I Expected Aregbesola To Have Resigned, Says Omisore

The Peoples Democratic Party candidate in the 2014 governorship election in Osun State, Senator Iyiola Omisore, has asked Governor Rauf Aregbesola to resign from office because of the financial mess he allegedly plunged the state into, which led to his inability to pay workers’ salaries in the past seven months.

Omisore said this while speaking with journalists at the Secretariat of the PDP in Osogbo, the state capital on Sunday.

According to Omisore, who was also a former deputy governor of the state, Osun is now on a life support and requires an urgent financial aid to keep it alive.

He said, “It is good that Ogbeni Aregbesola admitted that the issue of Osun State financial crisis was beyond his capacity. But this admission is not enough, I expected him to have communicated to the state House of Assembly and honourably leave the seat of the governor.

“Osun is now a failed state because of financial recklessness of the governor. I really appreciate the fact that he confessed that the present state of Osun affairs is beyond him but he should immediately throw in the towel.

“Nearly all commercial banks in Osun Sate are being owed one form of loan or the other. The matter has reached that stage that the Committee of Bankers in the state at their meeting, resolved that no bank should borrow this government any more. They are also waiting for remittances into state coffers”.

In his response, Mr. Aregbesola denied the allegation of financial recklessness leveled against him by his former political opponent.

“We are not surprised that the unpaid salary has made Omisore to find his voice after his fruitless search for a non-existent mandate. We do not expect anything better from a man, who at the best of times, still fabricated lies against the Aregbesola administration all in his desperation to get the acceptance of the Osun people.

“Aregbesola is not reckless and the records and evidence abound to establish this fact.The National Bureau of Statistics, the Debt Management Office of the Presidency, and other agencies that operated under the PDP, could not find anything against Aregbesola other than statistics that confirm how the Osun economy has been improved”, the governor said though his media aide, Semiu Okanlawon.