The Osun Independent Electoral Commission (OSIEC) has released timetable for local government areas election across the state.
Recall that OSIEC, had yesterday at a press briefing announced October 15, for the conduct of councils election.
According to a timetable from the commission, made available to newsmen in Osogbo on Tuesday, primary elections and commencement of campaigns shall be effective from August 16 – September 6.
The entire process, as contained in the schedule of activities released and signed by the commission’s chairman, Segun Oladitan, shall run from August 12 to October 22.
Meanwhile, the main opposition party, who just won the last month Governorship poll in the state, People’s Democratic Party (PDP) has welcomed the development with dissatisfaction.
PDP had through its caretaker committee chairman, Dr. Akindele Adekunle, sounded a strong warning to OSIEC to desist from allowing the body to be used by the ruling All Progressives Congress and the outgoing Governor, Gboyega Oyetola.
Dr Adekunle at a press conference addressed at the PDP party Secretariat in Osogbo, on Tuesday said the planned Election is an effort in futility and a delibrate attempt to plunge the state further into financial abjection and misery.
He stressed further that the exercise will amount to a total illegality in the face of the new electoral law.
Adekunle said, “Section 28 of the Electoral Act, 2022, stipulates that no election can hold until a notice of 360 days is given to all relevant stakeholders before the such election. The Electoral Act also provides without any room for Mr Oyetola’s kind of dilly dally, in section 29, a period of 180 days within which list of candidates must be published.”
“There’s no ambiguity in the fact that the period within which the outgoing APC administration in Osun State is left with, is clearly far less than the period stipulated in paragraphs 28 & 29 of the Electoral Act, 2022. This shows that the proposed election was never on the table of the APC government in the state until they got sacked at the poll by same people the governor and his juvenile team of power drunks had taken for granted for so long”, he maintained.