‘N300 BILLION LOAN SCANDAL’: MAKINDE – Power, Politics And Profits! | Muftau Gbadegesin

The best place to start demystifying the falsehood, propaganda and distortion built around Governor Seyi Makinde’s secretive, clandestine, and surreptitiously mind-blowing ‘N300 BILLION’ fresh loan approved by the holidaying, rubber stamp, and ‘errand boys’ otherwise known as the state lawmakers is by dissecting, carefully and critically, the flimsy justification and terse clarification provided by his Chief Press Secretary, Pastor Sulaimon Olanrewaju.

By trying to shift the goal post, deflect from the crux of the matter, through crafting the half-truth Press Release, which sounded more like an attack on the beleaguered opposition APC, the senior journalist has done more harm to the reputation of the government, stir the hornet nest and provoked curious minded people to beam their search light, probe deeper and ask better questions regarding the dangerously contentious loan.

Despite the showmanship nature of his grandstanding, Pastor Olanrewaju so-called Press Released dated 28th August, 2025 fell embarrassingly flat, failed to address the core of the whistleblower claims and made it more of a partisan mudslinging than fiscal fisticuff. In fact, just as the Governor’s digital dingbats have consistently and persistently attacked and maligned the whistle-blower, Hon. Ibrahim Shittu of Saki West state constituency, on social media, Pastor Olanrewaju’s statement equally fired similar shots against the gentleman, whose strategic missiles caught state government off guard, ricocheted the corridor of power, and caused them many sleepless and anguish nights.

To take the first counterintuitive rebuttal of the Pastor on its head, consider this “First, there is no N300 billion “loan”. The CPS declared. He added that what the House of Assembly indeed approved was “N149 billion for refinancing, N151 billion for infrastructure investment and contractor financing”. He stressed that the refinancing part “means replacing an older, more expensive loan with a new facility on better terms, thereby reducing the state’s repayment burden”.

In addition, he quipped that “the one N150 billion for infrastructure investment and contractor financing attempts a structured arrangement that allows the government to fund ongoing and new projects while giving contractors the confidence to deliver on time”. Pastor Olanrewaju’s damage control entertainingly sounded more polished and refined grammatically when pale with the House of Assembly’s hurriedly packaged press release.

In essence, the statement equally failed the litmus test of contextualizing the controversial loan, one that has the potential to plunge the state into eternal debt – long after Governor Seyi Makinde’s administration faded into the quicksand of oblivion.

For a start, any discerning mind will not sweat before picking several holes in the Pastor Olanrewaju’s pastoral posturing. And one intriguing question that crosses the mind is the secrecy that shrouded the whole approval by the state lawmakers. In effect, the secrecy and opaqueness that surrounded the whole legislative oversight quietly raises suspicion on the intents and purposes behind the loan. That is in addition to painting a picture of potential financial misappropriation and embezzlement.

Partly because without any motive to divert or siphon, seeking approval for such a humongous amount will not be done while the state lawmakers are on recess. That brought us to the second part. Up till now, there has been no counterargument that the lawmakers are not on holiday. The implication of that is that any legislative work, constitutionally, may have to tarry awhile until the house reconvene.

While emergency, for instance can as well force the legislatures to resume plenary before resumption, events over the past few weeks in Oyo State particularly as the Governor warms up for a month vacation in only-God-know-where haven’t caused for alarm to warrant the emergency meeting of the assembly-men!

Combined together, the secrecy of the loan, and the hurried approval by the lawmakers intelligently dissolved the content of the Press Release – with devastatingly harrowing punches. One other crucial question that has begged for an answer has been the source of the loan: where will the money come from? In this case, Pastor Olanrewaju smartly dodged that part by making the whole statement more of an APC affair than a clarion call to halt financial profligacy in the state.

Of course, he, as the image maker of the Governor may not be privy to the details of the loan. And that ultimately limited his knowledge of the issue. Asking for a loan of N300 billion at this time seems troubling and disturbing for a governor whose pledge has been to leave the state better than he met it. To plunge the state into this fiscal abyss is to destroy the future of the state.

In 2022, when I called the attention of the state government to the neglect of the Agbowo shopping complex, despite the governor’s assured promise to revive the iconic edifice, many in the corridor of power got angered by the story. A week later, the governor, while appearing on a political program admitted that the remodeling and reconstruction of the edifice has indeed failed. Till today, that place still remains in the tableau of ruins.

So far, we’ve seen the interplay of power and politics by the state government. Particularly in the calculated and coordinated attacks on the whistleblower, Hon. Ibrahim Shittu whose emergence despite the militarization of the ‘2-units’ bye election of the 4th February, 2024, angered the Governor and infuriated the establishment. Indeed, the manner of the attacks against his person has only revealed a deeply troubling pattern in Nigeria’s public discourse, one that stubbornly fights off transparency and prioritizes groupthink of political jobbers and hangers-on. Of course, merely raising important legislative suspicion by the whistleblower only shows that the right thing wasn’t been done.

Think of the whistleblower’s heroic claim as a way to correct the wrongdoing of his colleagues and by extension the state government. That boldness, bravery and courage are ingredients needed for nation building and for strengthening our weak institutions. Again, think of the highly engaging, stimulating and thought-provoking analysis by the seasoned analysts of the Agidigbo FM?

That robust interpretation of the issue by the analysts aptly captured the timeless words of the American Journalist, T. D. Allman who argued that “genuinely objective journalism not only gets facts right, it gets the meaning of the events right”. It is journalism that, he concluded, ten, twenty, fifty years after the fact still holds up a true and intelligent mirror to events.

OYO101 is Muftau Gbadegesin’s opinion about issues affecting the Oyo state and is published every Saturday. He can be reached via @Upliftnuggets on X, muftaugbadegesin@gmail.com, and 09065176850.

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