…says Church donation a misplaced priority for state govt
…donation made by gov’s brother, a philanthropic gesture – Gov’s aide
The All Progressives Congress (APC) in Osun State has criticized Governor Ademola Adeleke and his siblings for donating N1 billion to the Cherubim and Seraphim Church in Lagos in remembrance of their late mother, Esther Adeleke.
The APC claimed that such a significant donation is misplaced considering the pressing financial needs of the State.
Sooko Tajudeen Lawal, Chairman of Osun APC, in a statement issued by Kola Olabisi, the party’s Director of Media and Information, questioned the timing of the donation and suggested that it could be linked to state funds.
Lawal, stated that it would interest the people of the State who are the real owners of the State’s fund of which Governor Adeleke is only its caretaker, to know why the Adelekes, during the tenure of the governor, it occured to the Adeleke siblings that they should donate the money to their late mother’s Church.
The state APC chairman stated, “It won’t be an overstatement to state that it was from the scarce resources of the Osun State fund that Governor Adeleke used as a mega donation in the remembrance of his mother in a church in Lagos.
“We, as a party, are not objecting to the extension of a helping hand to religious houses by either individuals, corporate bodies or political functionaries but it is our candid view that decency and morality should not be sacrificed on the altar of charity.
“While we consider it needless to comment on the overburdened queer manner of the governor’s comportment in the public which is at variance with his exalted position as number one citizen in Osun State, Governor Adeleke would save us the collective shame of wriggling his frame at the striking of two objects just the way he did at the Cherubim and Seraphim Church where he went to on his donation spree at a time he is yet to state any convincing statement on the N70,000.00 minimum wage for government workers in the state as approved by the Federal Government.”
Responding to the allegations, Olawale Rasheed, the spokesperson for Governor Adeleke, clarified that the donation was a private philanthropic gesture made by Deji Adeleke, the elder brother to Governor Ademola Adeleke and a renowned businessman.
The spokesperson emphasized that the donation had no connection to the State’s treasury.
Rasheed further criticized the APC’s statement, claiming that the opposition is running out of ideas and resorting to lies and fake news surrounding an event that was globally live-streamed and featured a personal donation from a billionaire.
“The Osun APC is daily hallucinating as it has become overwhelmed by the superlative performance of Mr Performer, Governor Ademola Adeleke. These days, press statements from the state APC appear to be silly concoctions from depressed minds who are lost as to how to tackle the state Governor.
“The other time, the opposition, shocked by wholesale validation of Osun infrastructure projects by the engineering community, ignorantly lambasted the highly professional and credible COREN/NSE team. Meanwhile, NSE had conducted similar exercises in APC states of Lagos and Ogun. Isn’t the state APC hallucinating?
“We seek to put this unnecessary debate to rest by clarifying once again that neither the state government nor the state Governor donated the said One Billion naira to the Lagos church. We add too that the said money is not being sourced from the state treasury. And we conclude by affirming that the philanthropist who made the donation had made even bigger donations in the past and even to the APC government to address the state emergency.
“Members of the public should ignore the vituperations and the fake news merchants who now run the deeply unpopular and polarised APC structures in Osun state,” the Spokesperson noted.
