Osun APC Faults NULGE Strike, Warns Over Council Chairmen’s Tenure Suit

The Osun State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has criticised the continued industrial action by the state chapter of the National Union of Local Government Employees (NULGE), warning that the lingering strike could worsen the plight of grassroots citizens as fresh litigation over the tenure of local government chairmen begins.

In a statement issued yesterday by its Director of Media and Information, Mogaji Kola Olabisi, the party advised NULGE to “put on a thinking cap” and reconsider its seven-month-old solidarity strike with the administration of Governor Ademola Adeleke.

Olabisi argued that the filing of a fresh suit by reinstated APC local government chairmen at the Federal High Court in Osogbo on September 12 was proof that the end of the labour impasse might not be in sight unless the union changed its tactics.

“It is an act of folly for a labour body to inherit another man’s enemy,” the statement read, alleging that NULGE had been operating as “an extension of the PDP” in the state.

The APC further accused the Adeleke administration of “romancing” the state leadership of NULGE while ordinary members languished in hardship, likening the situation to a “proverbial fly that follows a corpse into the grave.”

The opposition party also insisted that expectations that the tenure of its reinstated council chairmen would expire in October 2025 were misplaced, noting that the issue had now become a subject of fresh litigation at the Court of Appeal.

The statement questioned why Governor Adeleke organised another council election in February despite the subsistence of the APC chairmen’s tenure, which the Court of Appeal had affirmed in its February 10 judgment.

The APC accused the NULGE executive, led by Dr. Nathaniel Ogungbangbe, of lacking tact and diplomacy, describing it as “the worst in the history of the union in Osun.” It also alleged that while rank-and-file members of NULGE were struggling, some senior union officials recently attended a seminar in Lagos.

The party concluded by warning that the strike, coupled with the acceptance of salaries during the absence from work, would not be defensible in the long run, stressing that “the world is watching and taking note.”