APC Youths Kick Against Alleged LG Funding of LAUTECH
On Friday, the youth wing of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Oyo State requested that local government chairmen disregard the most recent memo from Mr. Olasunkanmi Olaleye, the commissioner for local government and chieftaincy matters, asking them to establish a university in the state.
The supposed institution is the Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH), which is situated in Ogbomoso.
Before the state administration of Mr. Seyi Makinde campaigned for its sole ownership with a promise to pay the state of Osun a value of eight billion nairas over three years in the assets sharing agreement reached in January 2021, LAUTECH was jointly held by the governments of Oyo and Osun.
The State Government sent academics from LAUTECH’s Faculty of Agriculture to Iseyin at the beginning of the year to build a satellite campus for the institution in the Oke-Ogun area of the State.
However, the APC youth movement questioned in a press release by its Comrade Adebayo Folorunso when it became the local government’s obligation to support tertiary education.
However, Comrade Folorunso pleaded with the Chairmen to toss the aforementioned letter.
The opposition stressed how local governments’ responsibilities now include funding postsecondary education because the primary schools in their jurisdictions have gotten so terrible and unwelcoming to students and teachers.
“The memo asking local government Chairmen to approve funding as support to LAUTECH is an attempt to siphon Council funds at the expense of grassroots development.
“We see this development as a rather unfortunate, misguided, and unlawful act which would further impoverish our people at the grassroots and make worse their bad situation.
“We are calling on well-meaning citizens of the State and agents of the Federal Government to call the State Government to order to stop traveling in an unpopular direction.
“If the Chairmen give approval and append their signatures to this request to fund LAUTECH, it is nothing but pure misappropriation of public funds, and all the people involved would be brought to justice in due course.
“Many of our primary school classrooms that are within the purview of local governments are yearning for attention and we wonder why the State Government is always using the allocation meant for the 33 local governments to fund the State government-owned projects.
“Our people can now understand why their roads are not motorable and why the poverty is widespread with attendant insecurity among the locals,” he stressed.
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