Sell helicopter to pay salaries, Osun PDP tells Aregbesola

The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in Osun State yesterday urged Governor Rauf Aregbesola to sell the state-owned helicopter as a way of offsetting the seven-month salary arrears it claimed is owed to civil servants in the state.

Besides selling off the helicopter that it claimed was being used for frivolous purposes, the opposition party also charged the governor to reduce international travels it claimes are bringing no benefit to the populace.

The suggestions were immediately dismissed by Governor Aregbesola who stated that the shameful lies being peddled by the PDP would not help it in any way in reinventing its supposedly despicable image in the estimation of the people of the state.

The Bureau of Communication and Strategy in the Office of the Governor, said the suggestion showed how degenerate the PDP has become in the thinking process of its leaders to come up with the selling of a mere helicopter in order to pay salaries.

Aregbosola

The PDP in a statement issued by Prince Diran Odeyemi, the party’s Director of Media and Strategy said: “What this administration told us was that the helicopter was to be used for surveillance, but we have since discovered that the machine is only serving the travelling needs of Mr. Aregbesola and his family. This remains one draining pipe that must be blocked.”

Counsels Gov, aides
It also advised the governor and his aides to forthwith, stop travelling in chartered aircraft around the world stressing that, if President Muhammadu Buhari could be travelling on British Airways, even when aircraft in presidential fleet are available, there is need for Governor Aregbesola to borrow a leaf.

While expressing support for workers for demanding their entitlement through industrial action, it maintained that Osun State found itself in the present state of insolvency because public funds were “expended on irrelevant but huge projects without adequate projection of the funds available to the state.”

The PDP said: “For the state lawmakers, they must have it at the back of their minds that the fragile hope of Osun indigenes now rests on them
and we want to advice that they should not be rubber stamp in the hands of the governor.”

Aregbesola reacts
Responding on behalf of the governor, Director of the Bureau of Public Communications, Mr. Semiu Okanlawon said: “It is disheartening how degenerate PDP has become in their thinking process. They screamed ignorantly about two years ago that Osun procured a helicopter with the sum of N8 billion. We had asked them to find out the cost of a Boeing plane let alone a helicopter which was only leased and it was to beef up the Osun Swift Action Squad, SAS, for its aerial surveillance. This was clear to all in the state that the helicopter was procured as part of the Rauf Aregbesola administration’s comprehensive security measures to drive criminals far away from the state.

‘PDP’s narrow thinking’
“For the PDP in its narrow and pedestrian thinking to tell us to sell the helicopter is a sign of intellectual laziness.”
It added that allegations that Aregbesola uses the helicopter for his personal use lacked any evidence.
Advising Odeyemi and the PDP to review their strategy, Okanlawon said: “This certainly cannot be the path to go if its intention is to be an opposition party. An opposition party that will help the people must know what the people want.

Security
“The people of Osun need adequate security which PDP failed to provide throughout Nigeria in its 16 years of misrule. The people of Osun require good governance which the PDP could not give them. I, therefore, advise that shameful lies such as those Odeyemi cooked up again and threw to the media would not help the pàrty. They would help sink it deeper.”