Seyi Makinde, the governor of Oyo State, has criticized President Bola Tinubu, claiming that it is hard to tell the truth to power under his government.
Ayodele Fayose, who used to be the governor of Ekiti State, said that Makinde’s comment about Tinubu at former Vice President Yemi Osinbajo’s birthday party proved that the president ignored him when he last visited the Villa.
The Guardian says that Makinde spoke at an event in Ibadan on Saturday and compared the current scenario to what he called a more consultative approach during the time of the late President Muhammadu Buhari.
The governor said he missed how Osinbajo led while Buhari was in charge.
Makinde remarked, “You can’t speak truth to power in this time,” and he criticized the way the Tinubu administration handled the tax reform proposals. “We had the same problem in this administration with the tax bill. We said, ‘Bring the tax bill back so we can all look at it without getting upset.’
“They said the tax bill will go through.” It’s an insult to even the governors. We don’t know what the National Assembly passed or signed up for the tax measure. “I really miss you, Osinbajo,” he remarked.
He claimed that Osinbajo’s leadership as chairman of the National Economic Council (NEC) had an effect on his choice not to put Oyo under a full lockdown.
Fayose said in a statement released yesterday, “Makinde met the shock of his political life when he visited Asiwaju last week in an effort to undertake damage control on his public rant against the president.
“After being ignored by the president, Makinde must have realized that there was no way to make things right between him and the president.” This is especially true because Asiwaju said that he will back his party’s candidates in Oyo in 2027.
Fayose said that after getting an unhelpful reaction from the president last week, Makinde was seeking to make himself “the emergency opposition mouthpiece.”
He went on to say, “If Makinde had gotten the soft landing he wanted from the president, he wouldn’t have made that statement, which condemned President Tinubu’s government by calling him a dictator and praising Buhari’s administration.”
“With these promises, the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Oyo should now wake up and fight Makinde’s candidate, who he will run under the African Democratic Congress (ADC), knowing that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) won’t let him use it.”
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