Osun State Government and the State Judicial Service Commission have been threatened with legal action by an Ibadan-based lawyer named Mutalubi Ojo Adebayo over unpaid allowance arrears owing to all Judicial employees in the State.
Adebayo gave the state government till September 30, 2023 to pay off the debt, according to a notice he signed and dated September 21, 2023 that was obtained by sarewa hausa.
The prominent attorney said he will seek interest and aggravated damages on the back wages, claiming the state government’s reluctance to pay was an act of contempt for the law.
The statement reads, “I, JCI Senator Mutalubi Ojo Adebayo, SAN, shall commence legal action in a court of competent jurisdiction on the 3rd day of October, 2023 to recover the full amount of the said unpaid allowances from the Government of Osun State and its Judicial Service Commission.”
“FURTHER NOTICE that, I shall also demand interest and aggravated damages in respect of such unpaid allowances, as the acts of the Government of Osun State in refusing to pay same throughout the years amount to simple callousness, recklessness, disdain for rule of law, indecency, and unfairness.
In the words of the Osun State Judicial Officers’ Association: “This serves as a notice to the Governor, the Government, and the Judicial Service Commission of Osun State of Nigeria that if all the arrears of allowances being owed to all the Judicial Officers in the state (both serving and retired) from the tenure of Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola till date are not liquidated on or before the 30th day of September 2023.”
The state government issued a response signed by Olawale Rasheed, a spokesperson for Governor Ademola Adeleke, in which they claimed that the legal practitioner Mutalubi Ojo Adebayo’s threat of legal action was an effort at meddling and a misreading of the employment relationship.
The allowances, according to Rasheed, were money that the Aregbesola/Oyetola administration owed them.
He stated that the Adeleke administration inherited a massive N100 billion in pay, pension, and employment-related debt from the two previous governments of the All Progressives Congress, APC, in addition to another state debt of over N400 billion.
It is important to remind the public that the lawyer explicitly stated that the allowances were owed by the Aregbesola/Oyetola government, even if it would be counterproductive to connect the threat of legal action to the politicization of service affairs.
We may also inform him that the Adeleke administration inherited a massive 100 billion naira debt linked to salaries, pensions, and employment from the two previous governments of the All Progressives Congress. This is in addition to the approximately 400 billion naira owed by another state.
Despite a lack of funds and competing demands on public spending, the Adeleke administration has begun paying off this salary and pension debt. Governor Ademola Adeleke is widely known to have implemented creative resource management strategies and cared for the well-being of state employees while successfully accomplishing his administration’s sectoral goals.
The Adeleke administration is on record as having made efforts to pay off employment-related debt inherited from previous administrations and making sure that salaries are paid on time. A lot of people are probably wondering why the lawyer in Ibadan didn’t sue the government officials responsible for the catastrophe.
We are even more surprised that this lawyer has chosen to criticize a Governor who is using his authority to fix the mistakes of the previous 12 years and put his state on a path to long-term prosperity.
We also want to make it clear that the unions representing Osun’s court employees are strong and effective in representing their members’ best interests. The Unions are cognizant of the government’s efforts to address their concerns on all fronts, as well as the inherited decay.
We must therefore strongly advise the attorney to refrain from disruptive and intrusive activism. He should not assume labor conflict concerns that are properly handled by unions and their employers, as we do not feel he is politically recruited to do so.
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