The Osun State Chapter of Social Democratic Party (SDP) has told President Muhammadu Buhari to declare a state of emergency in Osun following the present high level of untimely deaths, hungers and poverty ravaging the people of the state.

In a statement issued on Monday in Oshogbo, the State Chairman, Chief Ademola Ishola, disclosed that information as its disposal showed that over 510 retirees in the state died in the last 18 months waiting for their entitlements.

He noted that, in addition, an “uncountable numbers of the state workers lost their lives to avoidable deaths in the last one year due to financial difficulties while many of them who have been confined to half salaries being paid them by Governor Rauf Aregbesola in the last eight months are dying in silence.”

According to him, many of the sick people in the state who cannot afford private hospitals since the public hospitals have been ineffective since that sack of all the medical doctors have now resorted to trado-medical centres for help.

The SDP Chairman stated that the state will totally collapse economically and socially if Aregbesola is allowed to continue in office beyond July this year.

Ishola lamented that the present woeful allocation of funds from the Federation Account accrued to the state “has shown that we cannot recover again from this mess under Aregbesola, hence, the need for the All Progressives Congress (APC) led government at the centre to declare a state of emergency in the state.”

He lamented: “In the whole of the federation, Osun is the only state that for two months (November and December 2015) it received minus allocations while the January allocation of the state was as low as N6.2 million for a population of over 5 million people.

“We must not pretend that all is well with Osun. Indeed, all is now well as this state is almost ruined by Aregbesola’s government. Today, this state took a bailout of N34.9 billion which we will not finish paying until 2035, the rescheduled debt by Debt Management Office (DMO) of N88 billion is still there and several billions of naira being owed many of Aregbesola’s contractors.

“Businesses are folding up in the state, many able-bodied beggars are now parading streets of major towns of the state and the state secretariat is now a ghost centre as many workers cannot afford transport fare to their various offices.

“Education is at its lowest ebb as woeful performances of the school pupils had forced the governor to set up a panel to investigate failures of public school students in external examinations.

“The end of this pathetic problem is not in sight. Even if the government decides to take levies and taxes, residents of the state are too poor to pay.

“Our problem in this state is caused by Aregbesola’s appetite for debt, financial mismanagement and corruption because our state was better off before 2010 when he was forced on us by Justice Clara Ogunbiyi-led appeal court judgment.”

Ishola urged Buhari to save the over 5 million innocent people of the state including children, women and the elderly from total annihilation from the hands of Aregbesola.

The party further threatened that in case President Buhari refused to act timely, SDP will forward Aregbesola’s alleged atrocities to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

•Photo shows Governor Aregbesola in class, dressed like a secondary school student.

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