Taiwo Popoola
The All-Progressives Congress, APC, in Osun State has criticised the donation of N1 billion by Governor Ademola Adeleke and his siblings to the Cherubim and Seraphim Church in Lagos.
The party in a statement signed by its chairman, Tajudeen Lawal, criticised the governor for donating such a sum at a time the state is in financial distress.
DAILY POST recalled that on Sunday, Dr Deji Adeleke announced the donation of N1 billion to the church in Lagos in remembrance of the late matriarch of the Adelekes, Esther Adeleke, who was a prominent member of the church during her lifetime.
The donation has generated reactions from both the lowly and highly placed members of the society, with some questioning the rationale behind the gesture.
Lawal held that everything was morally wrong with the donation of such a huge sum of money for frivolities by the governor and his siblings.
Lawal stated that while the APC is not in any way opposed to the support of religious groups by any individual or a group of people, it is however pertinent that such should be done with utmost decency.
He also explained further that the timing of the donation, when Adeleke is still the chief executive of the state, made it susceptible to the conclusion by right-thinking members of the society that the money was coughed out of the common patrimony of Osun State.
Lawal who stated that it would interest the people, who are the real owners of the state’s funds, of which Adeleke is only its caretaker, to know why it is during the tenure of the governor that it occured to the Adeleke siblings that they should donate the money to their late mother’s church.
He maintained that the development signposts the fact that Governor Adeleke either lacks good and credible advisers or he refused to hearken to the advice of his numerous advisers – being the governor with the highest number of Special Advisers and Senior Special Assistants in Nigeria today.
“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,” the Osun State APC chairman added.
