Engineer Rauf Olaniyan, currently fighting the battle to retain his seat as the elected deputy governor of the state, dealing with a series of crisis and allegation against him from the Oyo lawmakers in the State House of Assembly. The Engineer turned politician recently dumped the ruling PDP for the opposition APC, but promised to not to resign from his position as the deputy governor of the state.
Twenty-Four PDP members of the State assembly out of the overall 32 Assembly members across different political parties have agreed and signed a petition in favour of the impeachment of Engineer Rauf Olaniyan, the deputy governor of the state who has fell out with the state governor, Engineer Seyi Makinde. The petition contained allegations of abuse of office, financial recklessness, misconduct, abandonment of office duties and other offences. He has been given a seven-day ultimatum to respond to the allegations against him. The speaker of the State House of Assembly, Hon. Adebo Ogundoyin, said failure to respond by the Deputy Governor would lead to commencement of his impeachment process.
There has been some speculations and unconfirmed reports in the public that relationship between the Governor Seyi Makinde and his Deputy have been unstable since late last year. The deputy governor sometimes in April this year in a tweet on his personal handle denied he has dumped the ruling PDP party to join New Nigeria Peoples Party NNPP but his recent defection to the APC confirms this assertion of a frosty relationship between him and his principal to an extent. The Deputy governor claims he had been urged by people in his camp to make the move to APC.
If the proposed impeachment is fully carried out, Engineer Rauf Olaniyan will go down in the history book of Oyo state politics as the first and only deputy governor to be impeached as well as being the first deputy governor to cross to another political party different from the state governor on which he was elected.
Reports compiled by Bisi Odusanya for IbadanCity ANNOUNCERS
