The governor of Osun State Alhaji Gboyega Oyetola is facing a backlash of sort over a recent expenditure by his administration, information at the disposal of highstreet.ng has revealed.
Governor Oyetola’s expenditure attracting condemnation from different quarters is the approval and purchase of multi-million naira cars for the state house of assembly members.
Checks revealed about N280 million was, a couple of weeks back, expended on brand new Toyota Camry XLE 2019 cars for the 26 lawmakers by the state government.
Findings put the unit price of a brand new Toyota Camry XLE 2019 at 30,000 dollars.
Sources confided in highstreet.ng that governor’s gesture was made in a bid to strengthen his relationship with the legislative arm in the state.
But the move has done bad rather than good, highstreet.ng understands.
Those who are privy to state of things told highstreet.ng the move has badly damaged the reputation of Mr Oyetola, a man many believe would do things differently and better than his predecessor, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola.
“The citizenry, especially the pensioners and civil servants are not happy with his recent move… from what I know the whole thing has made a mess of the governor’s reputation,” a source who is familiar with the mood of stakeholders in the state maintains.
But reacting to the development, Gov Oyetola who spoke through his spokesperson Ismail Omipidan justified his action on the ground that people shouldn’t expect legislative members to be same car for eight years.
Mr Omipidan said: “it would be unthinkable to say lawmakers got cars eight years ago and they should continue to use the same thing. Don’t forget that it is not the same set of people in the house eight years ago that are there now. Even for the ones re-elected, there’s always a budget and emoluments of office which must be provided. It is a three-arm government and everybody must be taken care of.”
