Political Appointees in Oyo State were not given official cars at the beginning of the current administration because they was “really no money”.
This was revealed by Governor Seyi Makinde while speaking on his programmes, and the challenges that has faced his administration in his first year in office during an interview aired on BCOS television.
Governor Makinde, however, stated that after the first anniversary of his administration some Commissioners and political appointees have received their official cars.
In his words, “When we came in, there was really no money. As a matter of fact, all political appointees were using their personal cars until after the first anniversary in office; we just started giving cars to some commissioners and other political appointees.”
Makinde also singled out the immediate past administration in the state led by Abiola Ajimobi for the debt burden his administration in faced with.
He said, “True, we met huge debts when we came in. When we investigated it in the Debt Management Office, we discovered that Oyo State was owing N99 Billion and foreign debt was 137 Million dollars. If you calculate and convert everything together, it is about 150 Billion Naira. We found out further and saw that when Governor Alao-Akala was leaving office, he left N4.8 Billion. So, it means the administrations of 2011 till 2019 borrowed more than N145 Billion.”
The Governor, however, noted that the problem is not borrowing but what you are borrowing for.
Explaining this, he said, “I came from a private sector where borrowing is not really an issue. To borrow money is not a problem because, sometimes, if you are expanding, you need to borrow but in such a way that it will be convenient for you to pay back and not leave the cross for the upcoming governments to bear. You should not borrow for consumption.
“We can borrow to expand economy and for infrastructure too. But we cannot be crying over spilled milk. So, we saw all these things and we thought we should be transparent with what we met on the ground. We have also moved forward to take charge of the amount that should be debited from federal allocation for the state.
“Where we saw they wanted to borrow for what would not yield anything good for the economy of the state, as the governor-elect, I went to Court and blocked them from accessing the money; about N7.6 Billion, which they had already signed. I wrote the Central Bank of Nigeria and we planned that the loan should be diverted to develop our farm estates in Eruwa and Akufo. And after we are done with that and they have seen what we have been able to put up there, we will develop other farm settlements into farm estates.”
