It’s no longer news that the Edo State Governor, Mr Godwin Obaseki is ready to deploy anything at his disposal to thwart the political aspiration of the Deputy Governor, Rt Hon Comrade Philip Shaibu ahead of the PDP primary election in February, 2024. Surprisingly, the Deputy Governor is said to be waxing stronger by the day.
Information reaching Popular News is that the Edo State 2024 Appropriation that was signed into law on Friday, December 15, 2023 is the latest of the series of missiles fired at Comrade Philip Shaibu and indeed, Office of Deputy Governor, with a view to keeping its activities in check ahead of the 2024 governorship primaries.
Before the budget was passed by the House, there was serious disagreement among the lawmakers over what they described as the “embarrassing allocation” to the Office of the Deputy Governor.
Insiders disclosed that there were shouting matches, something close to fisticuff, amongst the lawmakers at the executive session in a bid to settle the rift arising from the “unfair appropriation”. At the plenary, the Speaker, Hon. Blessing Agbebaku was said to have thrown parliamentary decency to the wind, disregarded all efforts made by his colleagues to ensure that the right thing was done as an unbiased parliament.
The budget the Governor presented to the State House of Assembly showed a meagre sum of N300 million allocated to the office of the Deputy Governor as against N8 billion allocated to the Office of the Secretary to the State Government and N19 billion to the Office of the Governor.
The Office of the Head of Service was allocated the sum of N968 million. The breakdown also revealed that the Speaker was a major beneficiary of the controversial budget with an allocation
of the sum of N13 billion.
Before the budget was hurriedly passed into law by the Speaker, it was gathered that at the executive session, there was a serious disagreement among the lawmakers who raised objections to the money that was allocated to the Office of the Deputy Governor.
As they say, the minority will always have their say while the majority will have their way. But in this case, the minority had their way, as all voices of dissent were subdued and the budget was passed.
Meanwhile, some of the aggrieved members of the parliament, who are of the Peoples Democratic Party(PDP), are said to have commenced close meetings with their colleagues with like minds in the All Progressives Congress(APC).
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