Obaseki pegs Dep Gov's at 300 million naira, Gov's office 19 billion, Speaker, 13 billion naira, SSG gets 8 billion, HOS 968 million

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.

The 2024 Appropriation he hurriedly signed into law, evening of Friday, December 15, 2023 is the latest of the series of missiles fired at Philip Shaibu and indeed, Office of Deputy Governor, with a view to destroying the institution. Before the controversial budget was passed by the House, there was serious disagreement among the lawmakers over what they described as " embarrassing allocation" to the office of the Deputy Governor. Sources say 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 into the wind, disregarded all efforts made by his fair-minded 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 merger sum of 300 million naira allocated to the office of the Deputy Governor as against 8 billion naira allocated to the office of the Secretary to the State Government and 19 billion naira to the Office of the Governor.

Our reporter who is in possession of the budget revealed that the office of the Head of Service was allocated the sum of 968 million naira.

The breakdown also revealed that the Speaker was a major beneficiary of the controversial budget with an allocation of the sum of 13 billion.

Before the budget was hurriedly passed into law by the speaker, our reporter 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, manipulated by the House Speaker who subdued all voices of dissent and passed the budget.

A close ally of the Governor Obaseki revealed to our reporter that, the governor vowed to ridicule and punish Shaibu financially in a bid to frustrate his governorship aspiration. However, this is sharply against what he preaches at public fora.

Our sources said the governor has forgotten that Shaibu is only an individual while the office of Deputy Governor remains an institution.

According to inside sources, this controversial budget has divided the hitherto united lawmakers, courtesy of Mr Governor. " He believes he is having a field day now but may end up the worst for it", an inside source said.

"The Speaker may be the first victim in all of these, another source quipped. Meanwhile, some of the aggrieved members of Peoples Democratic Party, PDP lawmakers are said to be having some clandestine meeting with their colleagues in the All Progressives Congress.