By Tunde Olamilekan
The lawmaker representing Ede North/Ede South/Ejigbo/Egbedore Federal Constituency, Osun State, Bamidele Salam, has said he is confident that the Supreme Court will favour the state government on the ongoing local government crisis in the state.
The lawmaker noted that the case instituted by the state government at the apex court over the seizure of local government allocations by the federal government will have a similar result to the one filed by President Bola Tinubu while he was the governor of Lagos State.
Salam who disclosed this while appearing on TVC Hallowed Chamber programme on Saturday, noted that some people at the federal level were behind the continued withholding of the LG allocations.
He said, “The state government is already in court and there are several cases already determined on this issue. One of them is the Lagos state Vs Federal Government and we all know what the ruling was. So, I doubt if the Supreme Court will now reverse what it said during that time.
“For some reason, some people at the Federal level do not want the government at the state level to succeed, and who, in trying to do that, have used a strong hand and clearly illegal tactics to withhold funds that are meant for local governments in the state.
“There is absolutely no basis for it. There are judgments of the courts, including the most recent one by the Court of Appeal, which recognised a set of local government chairmen and asked that they be recognised forthwith.
“But for some reason unknown to us, some players somewhere are trying to muscle the state government to achieve whatever they want to achieve, but I can assure you that they are going to fail because we are on the right side of the law.”
Salami, however, said the situation has not deterred the state governor, Senator Ademola Adeleke from delivering good governance to the people of Osun.
“The governor has continued to deliver on good governance and serve the people, and continues to emphasize that a president who kicked against such when he was governor would not authorize that.
“The governor believes strongly that this must be something some people are doing somewhere behind the president, and continues to appeal to the president to intervene so that they don’t rubbish the legacy he has built as a fighter for justice and democracy in the past few decades,” he added.
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