By AfrikTimes | Abuja
The national leadership of the National Union of Road Transport Workers has rejected the Osun State Government’s suspension of the union’s activities and moved to address the state’s leadership dispute in a way that directly contradicts the position the state government laid out just hours earlier. The body has installed a seven-member caretaker committee for the state, chaired by Kazeem Oyewale, alias Asiri Eniba.
The committee was inaugurated Friday at the union’s national secretariat in Garki, Abuja, with the national leadership arguing that Governor Ademola Adeleke has no constitutional authority to halt the union’s operations in the first place.
How we got here
The move follows the state government’s decision to suspend NURTW activities across Osun’s motor parks, along with the collection of levies, after violent clashes broke out in Osogbo when supporters of a faction led by Oyewale protested the leadership of sitting state chairman Nurudeen Alowonle. That protest escalated into a confrontation involving gunfire that sent residents fleeing. Commissioner for Information Kolapo Alimi, announcing the suspension, also directed security agencies to arrest anyone parading as a union official or executive.
National leadership pushes back
Responding through Deputy National President Aliyu Ore, NURTW national president Musiliu Akinsanya, MC Oluomo, rejected the state’s authority to suspend the union at all, arguing that the union was established by federal law and has previously won court battles against similar attempts by state governments to interfere with its operations.
Ore also offered an account of why a caretaker arrangement had become necessary in the first place, confirming that the union had been without functioning leadership in Osun for months and that repeated invitations sent to the state’s leadership had gone unanswered because, according to Ore, those individuals were “on the run.” Rather than leave the union without leadership on the ground, he said, the national body opted to install the caretaker committee to fill the gap.
Ore added that the timing carries particular weight given Osun’s approaching governorship election, since the union holds a Memorandum of Understanding with INEC covering the transportation of election materials, an arrangement he said the union visited INEC to discuss just a day before the committee’s inauguration.
Who’s on the committee?
Alongside Oyewale as chairman, the caretaker committee comprises Sunday Oludare as secretary, Lukman Ahmed as treasurer, and Ismaila Abdurahim, Adebayo Tajudin, Tajudin Akin, and Ayinde Mutiu as members. In his acceptance remarks, Oyewale pledged to move the union forward and said he would uphold both the country’s constitution and that of the union.
A collision course
This inauguration puts the NURTW’s national leadership on a direct collision course with the position the Osun State Government had staked out just hours earlier, that Alowonle, not Oyewale, is the union’s substantive and nationally recognized chairman in the state and that Oyewale has no legal basis to operate in Osun’s parks at all. It also comes as Oyewale continues to face a separate murder charge, alongside twelve co-defendants, over a February 2025 shooting in Iragbiji, a case currently proceeding via substituted service after the defendants reportedly evaded personal service, with arraignment scheduled for August 4.
AfrikTimes has reached out to the Osun State Government for comment on the national leadership’s move and will update this story with any response.
