Oyo State Governor, Engineer Seyi Makinde, on Wednesday, said that his administration will soon clear legal hurdles affecting the committee set up to look into the administration of local government and local council development areas.
In his speech at the Exco Chamber of the Governor’s Office, while receiving the reports of the committees, Governor Makinde called for ideas from the citizenry of the State to move the State to greatness.
Speaking speicifically on the committee that was set up to look into the affairs of Local Government by the last administration was dragged to court, he said that his administration would soon clear the legal huddles and get to the roots of how the councils were administered.
He said: “When we came in, we actually set up these seven committees and an additional one that is meant to look into the affairs of the local government and LCDAs.
“They went to court, got an injunction through the back door saying we should not be doing the review. I have not seen it anywhere in the world where you say to people that you want to investigate an issue and they say you cannot poke your nose into what is your own business. Well, I have bad news for them. Though we will obey court orders, it’s only a matter of time. We will eventually look into the issues surrounding the local government administration.”
The committees also presented their reports on the Investigative Panels on Ibarapa Polytechnic and Oke-Ogun Polytechnics; Committee on Dismissal/Retirement of Civil Servants between 2011 and 2019; Committee on Review of Contracts, Projects between 2017 and 2019; Task Force on Review of Operations at the Bola Ige International Market, Gbagi, Ibadan, among others.
The Governor, after receiving the reports, said that the Government will take immediate action on the recommendations, adding that the people should expect full implementation of the report within four weeks.
Governor Makinde made specific reference to the report of the committee on the wrongful dismissal of civil servants, noting that the Government will look into the recommendations of the committee and if they included bringing back some of the affected they would be returned to work immediately.
He said: “I want to say that we are not going to set up any further committee to review these reports but instead, we will go straight ahead to implement the recommendations, especially the committee that worked on the dismissed workers. This is because I believe that it is better for us to allow 100 guilty persons to go scot-free than to punish one innocent individual. I know you have done very well, looking at each individual and the issues that led to their getting dismissed. We will look at the report immediately and implement the recommendations.
“If you ask us to bring some of them back, we will bring them back almost immediately. So, I will set a time frame of four weeks for implementation of most of these reports.”
Governor Makinde said the time frame to implement these recommendations will not be more than four weeks “because nations are not built on wishful thinking.”
