[EXCLUSIVE] COVID-19: An Osun State Agency refuses to comply with the lockdown order

In spite of the first directive by the government of Osun State that its workers between Grade Levels 1-12 should proceed on two-week leave with effect from the 23rd of March, 2020, the Managing Director of the Osun State Investment Company Limited (now called Omoluabi Holdings), Dr. Tunde Faleye decided to scorn the governor’s well-intentioned directive and issued a counter-directive to the agency’s workers to continue to report at their desks.

It was the state government’s task force on the lockdown enforcement that stormed the company on Friday the 27th of March before the company was forced to shut down its activities. Obviously realising that its activities were capable of denting the government’s image, the company’s management hurriedly issue a circular after the task force’s intervention, to make it look like it had always complied with the governor’s directive.

Being a government agency, the company in question needed not be whipped into line before it should have led by example, more so that it has ‘Omoluabi’ as part of its new name. And as if all the above were not enough, the management has now directed a section of the company to disregard the memo it issued on Friday, to continue to report at work from today, Monday 30th March.

The affected section is where the company produces its “Essence” bottled water. Without minding the health of the staff, that of their families and the consumers of such water produced in this pandemic time, but mainly motivated by the profits the company will rake in, the Managing Director is clandestinely carrying on in embarrassing defiance of the state government directive.

The Managing Director is reportedly hiding under the government’s exemption of workers in water service from the lockdown order, but the question is “is OSICOL Water a part of the Osun State Water Corporation?”. The answer is No. Furthermore, if the general water production is intended to be exempted from the lockdown order, other private water producing factories in the state would not be shut down, but also allowed to continue working.

Meanwhile, the Managing Director of OSICOL, Tunde Faleye while reacting to his refusal to comply with the state’s directive said: “First of all we are a legal entity. We are not among parastatals, ministries or departments of government.  We are duly registered like any other private investment established to make profit. We don’t receive salaries or subventions from government. Even at that all our junior staff have been asked to stay at home. It’s only management staff that is still reporting to work and whatever we are doing is skeletal.”

Our suspicion however, is that the state government of Osun (through the Managing Director of OSICOL) is tacitly encouraging this double standards in its implementation of the lockdown order. It is suspectedly engaging in this capitalists tactic, by closing down the businesses of its competitors, in order for its own company to take advantage of this period to rake in all the profits. Doing business with the lives of its citizens, is least expected from the government at a time like this. The government is by this measure, risking the goodwill it has so far enjoyed.