SIM Card Distribution A Desperate Ploy, APC Tells Adeleke

The Osun State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has accused Governor Ademola Adeleke of plotting to spy on civil servants through the distribution of SIM cards, describing the move as a desperate attempt to manipulate workers ahead of the 2026 governorship election.

In a statement issued on Wednesday and signed by its Director of Media and Information, Mogaji Kola Olabisi, the opposition party dismissed the SIM card distribution as a “Greek gift” designed to monitor striking members of the National Union of Local Government Employees (NULGE) and other workers in the state.

Patriotic Insights News learnt that civil servants were summoned to the Staff Development Centre, Abere, for what government sources described as a “crucial meeting.” But APC said the exercise was nothing more than a cover-up for surveillance.

Quoting from a message allegedly issued by the NULGE secretary, the party said:

“The State Government has scheduled a programme for all civil servants on Wednesday, September 24, at the Staff Development Centre. As part of the programme, Glo SIM cards will be distributed to all civil servants in the state.”

APC claimed the Adeleke-led Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) government deliberately designed the programme to infiltrate the privacy of workers, track their conversations, and prevent them from engaging with reinstated APC local government chairmen and councillors over the backlog of federal allocations.

“It is shameful that a government could go this far, devising illegal means to intrude into the privacy of innocent workers. This is a gross violation of their fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution,” the statement read.

The party said Adeleke had exhausted every “backdoor tactic” to gain access to the local government funds, including using “compromised labour leaders, pliable security services, and commercialised opinion leaders,” but all had failed.

According to APC, the people of Osun are “fed up” with the PDP-led administration and would reject Adeleke at the polls in 2026.

However, when contacted, a senior aide to Governor Adeleke dismissed the APC’s allegations as “baseless propaganda,” insisting that the SIM card distribution was part of a wider government welfare initiative aimed at improving communication among workers.

The aide said: “This is not about spying on anyone. The programme is designed to ease communication and expand access to digital tools for our civil servants. The APC is only playing politics with everything.”