Payroll: Adeleke’s aide threatens suit over alleged illegal call recording

The spokesperson to Osun State Governor, Ademola Adeleke, Olawale Rasheed, has accused the Chief Executive Officer of Sally Tibbot, Sa’adat Bakrin-Ottun, of unlawfully recording and circulating a telephone conversation involving the governor’s Chief of Staff, Kazeem Akinleye.

In a statement obtained in Osogbo on Wednesday, Rasheed defended Akinleye’s role in the re-verification of the initial payroll audit conducted by Sally Tibbot for the state government.

Bakrin-Ottun had, during a programme aired on TVC and in a video clip circulating on social media, played a voice recording in which a male voice was heard angrily raining curses on another person.

She claimed the voice was that of Akinleye, recorded after a disagreement over the implementation of her firm’s payroll audit findings.

Reacting, Rasheed alleged that the consultant recorded and circulated the conversation without authorisation and with the intent to malign the Chief of Staff.

“We again alert the public of deliberate falsehood and character assassination being pursued by the executive vice chairman of Sally Tibbot’s firm. Her firm came in by January 2023, when Mr Governor was barely two months in office. This was reflected in her official report submitted to the state. The audited payroll was clearly undisputed as that of the previous administration.

“She even confirmed that the previous administration injected 12,000 workers into the payroll, which again confirmed that what she audited was the payroll of the former government. Her attempt to twist the untwistable reflects her new role as a hired political operative of the Osun APC. But the facts are too clear to be distorted.

“In her obsession with the Chief of Staff, the consultant has violated the law by recording and circulating recorded calls without authorisation and by sharing the same on national television with the intent to malign the person of the Chief of Staff. That is a grave breach of the cybercrime and data laws. She will soon get court papers,” Rasheed said.

He further stated that Akinleye acted within his responsibility as a gatekeeper to the governor by resisting what he described as an attempt to push through an audit report that would have “defrauded the state and destroyed the careers of hundreds of legitimate workers who were listed as ghost workers without any just cause.”

Rasheed insisted that the governor and his Chief of Staff upheld due process, the rule of law, labour regulations and anti-corruption statutes in handling the staff audit matter.

“The matter is now before the anti-graft agencies. If the consultant has any other details aside from her report and the report of the re-verification committee, she should submit them to the investigators from the anti-graft agencies instead of junketing from one media station to another. Osun people already know the truth—that the governor stopped a scam that would have resulted in human misery and financial loss to the state,” he added.

The dispute follows a lingering disagreement between the Osun State Government and Bakrin-Ottun over the refusal of the Adeleke administration to implement the payroll audit report conducted by Sally Tibbot.

Bakrin-Ottun had accused the state government of covering up a multi-billion naira fraud allegedly uncovered during the verification exercise.

However, the government rejected the claim, alleging that the firm wrongly labelled many active employees as “ghost workers” in a bid to claim huge commissions.