Five Months After, Applicants Express Concern On Imole Youth Corps

•Continued from front page

I was hopeful I would be engaged and had already planned on the expected monthly s pend. I did not know it will take this long, and unfortunately, there is no informa on on when it is going to start yet” he said.

Another applicant, Seyi Gbadebo, tasked the state government not to allow the Imole Youth Corps shrouded in secrecy like the recruitment process done by the ousted administraon of former governor Adegboyega Oyetola on the teachers’ employment.

Gbadebo said: “I want to urge Governor Adeleke to be transparent on the Imole Youth Corps ma er. We don’t want it to be like that of the teachers’ recruitment done in secrecy by Oyetola. The Governor should give us informa on. We are in the dark.”

Miss Shukurat Odunola, a resident of Iree, who also applied for the scheme, urged the state government to speed up the process and select those they wanted to empower.

Odunola appealed to Adeleke not to poli cise the scheme, claiming that some poli cians were already gathering names to be submitted.

According to her, “The state government needs to fasttrack the process because it is taking too long and if care is not taken, the whole process might be hijacked by poli cians who have their candidates to fill the slots.”

A beneficiary of the OYES, Yusuff Abdulrahman, told OSUN DEFENDER that the state government rushed the dissolu on of the old scheme without having a proper succession plan in place.

Abdulrahman said the dissolu on was poli cal, sta ng that many of the OYES beneficiaries do not belong to any polical party.

He said: “The fact that the new scheme is yet to be fully on

Osun Govt. Threatens To Shut Private Schools Over Refusal To Renew Licence

Osun State Government has threatened to shut down some private schools over their refusal to renew their licences.

According to the government, the affected private schools have to pay their opera onal or renewal levies before the resumpon of 2023/2024 academic session coming up on September 7, 2023.

ground five months a er Governor Adeleke dissolved OYES shows that the government did not plan well before taking that decision.

“The Governor’s handlers did not advise him well on the OYES dissolu on and I believe it was poli - cal. What they failed to understand was that many of us in OYES were not members of any poli cal party.

“The Governor ought to have done a thorough finding before dissolving OYES because at the end of the day, we are all Osun indigenes and we never envisage our own Governor taking away our source of income.”

Reac ng, the Spokesperson to the Governor, Mallam Rasheed Olawale, said the recruitment process was ongoing, adding that it will commence very soon.

“Governor Adeleke have not abadoned the Imole Youth Corps programme, he is fully commi ed to it. We are trying to put some structures in place, so I can tell the programme commence very soon.”

How Generator Fume Killed 4 OSPOLY Students In Iree

•Victims Were High On Drugs - Sources

RESIDENTS of Iree, the host community of Osun State Polytechnic, were thrown into mourning when four students of the ins tu on were announced dead at the early hour of Friday, July 7, 2023.

The deceased were said to have died a er inhaling generator fume while sleeping.

OSUN DEFENDER reliably gathered that two other students survived the generator fume incident a er they were rushed to hospital.

The incident occurred at Yakoyo, Estate area, Iree.

According to some students, the deceased with Na onal Diploma, Year I, Daily Part-Time students.

They were said to from the same family in Ilobu, Irepodun local government area of the state, according to sources.

A close associate of the deceased who craved anonymity told OSUN DEFENDER on Wednesday that “The deceased were living in a three-bedroom flat. They were from the same family in Ilobu. They were DPT ND 1 students.

“On Thursday, July 6, the students were having matricula on party; and one of them had a birthday the following day which was Friday; so they were celebra ng everything together. They got drunk; four of them slept in a room while two of their friends slept in another room.

“They put on the generator and placed it inside the flat. I think the fume of the generator choked the four persons that slept in a room and they died; the other two were rushed to the hospital.”

Asked how the neighbour got to know about the incident, the associate said: “The following morning, one of their friends that went to greet the birthday boy and he discovered the doors were locked from behind. He knocked severally but nobody responded; so he forced his way inside the flat and raised the alarm when he discovered that his friends were dead.”

Also, a member of the Osun Polytechnic Students Union Government who did not want his name in print said the deceased and two others were having an overnight pre-birthday and matriculaon party on Thursday, July 6, 2023 when the incident happened.

According to him, the vic ms had go en intoxicated with hard drugs during the party and le their door open.

He said the fume of the generator they put on must have entered the room through the open door and got them suffocated.

The source said: Four persons actually died in the incident contrary to what was reported that it was two.

“What we discovered when we got to the scene of the incident was that they were already high on alcohol or drugs which did not allow them to perceive the generator fume.” reinstate the ethos of a federal structure, the basis of which independence was fought for and granted.

The medium gathered that one of the vic ms hospitalised was discharged on same day while the other one was discharged on Saturday.

Meanwhile, the names of the vic ms is yet to be unveiled at the me of filling this report.

The government, in a release signed by the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Educa on, Mr. Murtala Jimoh, on Tuesday, warned private schools which are yet to pay or renew their opera onal licences to do so or face being shut down.

Jimoh said payment of or renewal of operaonal licence is a statutory mandate for the schools.

He advised the school owners to make the payment directly to the Ministry of Educa on at block F, Room 9, headquarters of the Osun Internal Revenue Service beside the State Secretariat or OIRS outsta ons across the State.

“School owners are hereby enjoined to renew their opera onal licences up to date before the resumpon of the 2023/2024 academic session that comes up on 7th September 2023.

“Failure to pay the levies will lead to closure of such schools as the payment is the statutory mandate to renew opera onal licences to schools”, he stated.

Prior to the vegetative abrogation of the unambiguously federalist 1963 (Republican) Constitution by the military, the federating units all had their own insignia; they had their own Constitutions, Flags, Anthem and Crest. They were real federating units and the data is unambiguous that they performed very well, meeting and exceeding their targets. It was a productive era. The same is what applies in real federal systems such as the USA, Australia, Canada, Brazil and so forth.

A generation diversity must be acknowledged, indeed respected. You cannot repudiate culture and civilisation. For example, the anthem of the State of Osun replicates the anthem of the Western Region and has deep significance. The anthem echoes the renaissance brought into existence after the signing of the treaty of Kiriji which ended the civil war in Yoruba land. The Development Agenda For Western Nigeria (DAWN) has accepted it for use across the Western Region and it has been adopted in Ondo State. It must continue to resonate across the Western Region.

In the United States and elsewhere, the states have as insignia of their own such as “State Bird”, State this and that and in India regions adopt indigenous languages operating at par with English as official language.

Lagos is an example of a State with a Crest and an Anthem. Lagos led in wrestling away, many of the benefits of Federalism enjoyed by Osun and all states now, from the then centralising, military carry over Federal Government. Ogun State has an anthem and when Gbenga Daniel, a PDP Governor was there and the House of Assembly was majority PDP, being truly educated in mind and spirit, they didn’t make laws for the anthem or crest to be jettisoned.

It would have been a different case, if Osun, before