Ademola Adeleke, the governor of Osun State, has been given a 10-day deadline to pay arrears of allowances owing to retired and active judges in the state or risk legal action by Ibadan-based attorney Mutalubi Adebayo, SAN.
In a statement dated September 21 that was signed by him and received by our correspondent in Osogbo, Adebayo stated that if Adeleke refused to comply with the request by September 30 legal action to force him to pay up would start on October 3 in a court with the appropriate jurisdiction.
The attorney, who verified in a message to our correspondent that he was the author of the declaration, also stated that in addition to the arrears of unpaid entitlements, he would also seek interest and increased damages.
Adebayo’s statement further read in parts, “This serves as a notice to the Governor, the Government and the Judicial Service Commission of Osun State of Nigeria that if all the arrears of allowances being owed all the Judicial Officers in the state (both serving and retired) from the tenure of Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola till date are not liquidated on or before the 30th day of September 2023, I, JCI Senator Mutalubi Ojo Adebayo, SAN, shall on the 3rd day of October 2023 commence legal action in a court of competent jurisdiction to recover the full amount of the said unpaid allowances from the Government of Osun State and its Judicial Service Commission.
“Take further notice that I will also claim interest and aggravated damages in respect of those unpaid allowances because the acts of the Government of Osun State in refusing to pay same over the years amount to sheer callousness, recklessness, disregard for rule of law, indecent and unfair.”
However, the spokesperson to the governor, Olawale Rasheed, had yet to react to the statement as of the time of filing the report.
