APC tackles Osun gov over Adeleke’s N1bn church donation

The Osun State Chapter of the All Progressives Congress on Saturday said it disagreed with the manner of the donation of N1 billion by Governor Ademola Adeleke and his siblings to the Cherubim and Seraphim Church in Lagos.

The party said the donation had come at a time when Osun was almost in a state of insolvency.

PUNCH Online had earlier reported that the spokesman for Osun State Governor, Olawale Rasheed, had said that Dr Adedeji Adeleke, the elder brother to the governor, announced a donation of N1billion to the Centenary Endowment Fund of the Cherubim and Seraphim Church during a church programme in Lagos.

The Osun APC in a statement signed by the chairman of the party, Mr. Tajudeen Lawal, obtained by our correspondent in Osogbo, said the donation had, “generated a lot of furore among both the lowly and highly placed members of the society, questioning the rationale behind such squandering of the questionable resources by Governor Adeleke and his siblings at a time that many pressing government obligations are crying for monetary attention in the state.”

Commenting further on the donation, Lawal said the donation of such a huge sum of money on frivolities was morally wrong.

Lawal stated that while his party, the APC, was not in any way opposed to the support of religious groups by any individual(s) or a group of people, such should have been done with utmost decency.

“It won’t be an overstatement to state that it was from the scarce resources of the Osun State funds that Governor Adeleke used as a mega donation in the remembrance of his mother in a church in Lagos.

“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,” the APC chairman said.

Reacting, the governor’s spokesman explained that the N1 billion donation to the church was done by Dr Deji Adeleke and had no link or source with the state government, adding that Governor Adeleke did not donate the said amount.

Rasheed, further said the APC and its handlers have run out of ideas, hence the resort to “barefaced lies and fake news on an event globally live streamed and a donation personally made by the billionaire father of a billionaire, Dr Deji Adeleke.”

He added, “Let us all recall that Dr Adeleke made substantial donations to the state government under the Oyetola administration during the COVID crisis. Was Governor Adeleke in office then? Dr Adeleke also hugely contributed to the Federal Government during the Covid crisis. Was Governor Adeleke in charge of the Osun treasury then?”

“At the event in Lagos, neither the state government nor the state governor made any donation. The only donation came from Dr Adeleke who is more than capable of doing so as he had done to APC governments when Mr Oyetola and Muhammadu Buhari were in office.

“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 the APC states of Lagos and Ogun. Isn’t the state APC hallucinating?”