A group known for its fight for human right, Civil Societies Coalition for the Emancipation of Osun State (CSCEO) has asked the apex bank to take over the payment of workers’ salaries and pensioners from the remainder of the N34.988bn bailout released to state recently.

The chairman of the coalition, Mr Sulaiman Adeniyi, made this know at a press conference in Osogbo the Osun State capital on Wednesday.

The group said since the state government has failed to pay all the workers outstanding salaries and pension, was an indication that the bailout fund might have been used for other purposes.

The Chairman said: “We want to call on the Central Bank of Nigeria to withdraw the bailout from Osun State government and pay the balance of the outstanding salaries and pensions due to the affected workers and retirees’ bank account directly.

“This is in order to ameliorate the suffering of the people of the State since they are the ones who will be paying back the debt long after Aregbesola must have gone back to his Lagos State.”

The group also stated that the governor still owed lecturers in the four state owned tertiary institutions, which demonstrated that the governor did not care about the living of the lecturers and the future of the students who had been idle as a result of the strike in their schools for the past four months.

Adeniyi further accused Aregbesola for declaring war against journalists in the state, saying the governor should be held responsible in case anything untoward happened to any journalist in the state.

He added: “We are calling on President Mohammadu Buhari and all relevant security agencies in the state not to treat Aregbesola’s threat against members of the pen profession with kid-gloves.

“We want President Muhammadu Buhari led Federal Government of Nigeria to prove to the whole world that its anti-corruption war is for real and that there will be no sacred cows in its implementation.”