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• Your rule was barren, govt responds

BY OLA AJAYI

IBADAN —  The political rivalry between Governor Abiola Ajimobi of Oyo State and a former governor of the state, Senator Rashidi Ladoja heightened, yesterday, as the two accused each other of destroying the state civil service.

Ladoja had reportedly said that the state government had destroyed the civil service by its sack of some Permanent Secretaries.

But the All Progressives Congress, APC, in the state reacting through its Interim Publicity Secretary, Mr. Dauda Kolawole said the allegation was unbecoming of the ex-governor who did not have any concrete impact while in power.

According to the ruling party in the state,  the Abiola Ajimobi-led government was concentrating on rebuilding the institution of the civil service which it said had long been bastardised by previous governments before it, stating that in the process, it could not but purge the service of long-held pollution.

“Ajimobi inherited accumulated dregs and dirt in all ramifications in the state. From Alao-Akala’s debasement of the values of the civil service, to Ladoja’s lack of mental depth to understand the rudiments of the service, it was a civil service that needed purification and restructuring.

“Our concentration was on rebuilding the institution of the civil service and restoring the dignity of an average civil servant in himself as the engine room of governmental development and not as a lap-dog to politicians in power,” the statement said.

APC punctured Ladoja’s allegation, saying, “Ajimobi’s government had trained 12,211 teaching and non-teaching staff of secondary schools, promoted 1,714 civil servants from all cadres in 2012 alone, gave training and capacity building to over 13,000 civil and public servants, dedicated 10 out of the 100 43-seater buses we procured to civil servants which convey them free to and fro work, among others.

“We challenge Ladoja to tell the whole world what he did for civil servants in his barren and unimpressive rule of our state.