OPINION: Stolen Government Vehicles Allegation – Oyo Govt., PDP Crying Wolves When There Is None | By Mutalubi Ojo Adebayo

ONE is always amused, bemused and worried whether the current government in Oyo State actually prepared for the real task of governance of the Pace – setting State. 

Am fortified for saying this in view of several off-the -track policies and frivolities that have become the pastimes of some of the top aides of the Governor, Engineer Seyi Makinde. It is high time that the Governor should call such aides to order lest they continue to distract him from substance of delivering on his mandates to the people of Oyo State.

My particular concern here is about the puerile allegations of carting away of official vehicles by members of the outgone government .
Am always tempted to ask whether the present government, particularly the Chief of Staff always make recourse to record and the hand-over notes before jumping into the media airwaves to play to the gallery and by so doing indirectly ridiculing himself and discrediting the government.

Governance is a serious business and I am at a loss on the reason why the Governor is not tapping from or availing himself with the rich wealth of public service experience of his Deputy Governor , Engineer Rauf Aderemi Olaniyan, FNSE. Working closely with the suave, noble, urbane and brilliant Olaniyan would have saved the government of most of the unnecessary wars of attrition they have plunged themselves into.

Coming back to the issue at hand, I will be a bit historical.

When Senator Ajimobi became the Governor of the state in 2011, all political appointees had no car to carry out their functions and we were all making use of our private vehicles to carry out public services. It took rebellion by some of us after 6 months that the Governor agreed that official vehicles should be bought for all the Cabinet members.

Senator Ajimobi governed the state like a profit-oriented public enterprise and was therefore able to block wastages and reduced cost of governance considerably, and such acts included the re-organisation of the state’s transport pool which used to be a beehive of fraud and the fuel dump which was ran on a public-private- partnership system throughout his 8-year tenure. It wont be a surprise if the beneficiaries of the hitherto massive fraud regimes in those two departments are the persons misleading Chief Bisi Ilaka, the Chief of Staff now.

Back to the issue under reference, being a very shrewd person, the government at the instance of the Governor bought cheaper but reliable Renault and Nissan Sentra vehicles for us as our official cars.

The government policy which is still extant till today at the State and Federal levels is that such cars should be sold to us at the end of our stewardship in accordance with the monetization policy of the government.

We asked for this rightful entitlement in May 2015 shortly before the end of our tenure of office, but the Governor refused to heed to our request on the ground of the downturn in the state and federal governments’ economies as at that time.

He told us point blank that he will not approve the “boarding” of cars that were 3years and 4 months old to any political appointees when civil servants were being owed some arrears of salaries. In actual fact, the policy to monetise the vehicles or having them boarded to us were prepared by the civil servants in the Cabinet Office, but the Governor outright disapproved it.

Some of our colleagues who had no vehicle apart from their official cars and who pleaded to be allowed just a grace of 1 month to use same had the vehicles forcefully retrieved from them by the law enforcement agencies at the behest of the immediate past Secretary to the State Government.

It is therefore a joke taken too far and indeed a comic relief that the present government is claiming that such almost 8 year old vehicles boarded and sold officially and legally to the political appointees in 2018 are being made issues just for political capital when the records of those vehicles are available to those crying wolves when and where there is actually none.

On my honour, if I was in the second term cabinet of Senator Abiola Ajimobi, I will not bid to buy my official vehicle as the car had become a very used tokunbo car having been on the road from February 2012 to May 2019.

The present government of Oyo State owes all those political appointees a debt of gratitude and sincere apologies for the huge embarrassment they have caused to those gentlemen and women who served our dear State diligently and meritoriously. Anything sort of that would have the net effect of discouraging others from putting in their best into the services of our State and Country in the future.

Engineer Seyi Makinde is now the Governor of our state, there is no hinderance on his path from purchasing official vehicles from as many political appointees as he may want to appoint, but I will advise that he should be a shrewd and prudent administrator like his predecessor-in-office, Senator Abiola Ajimobi, the father of the modern Oyo State.

I wish the new Governor the best of luck and my very best wishes always.

 

 

Asiwaju Mutalubi Ojo Adebayo

Former Attorney General and Commissioner For Justice, Oyo State