What Oyo people are resisting is not the concept of borrowing, but the fraudulent, clandestine, and self-serving manner in which this N300 billion loan is being pursued.
“It is laughable that whenever the issue of accountability is raised in Oyo State, the first instinct of Makinde’s defenders is to throw insults and drag in APC at the federal level.
“This is a tired tactic that only exposes their intellectual laziness and unwillingness to face the truth.
“First, let us put it on record: no one said taking loans is a sin. What we are saying—and what Hon. Ibrahim Shittu courageously exposed—is that loans must be tied to specific, transparent projects and subjected to due process. What Oyo people are resisting is not the concept of borrowing, but the fraudulent, clandestine, and self-serving manner in which this N300 billion loan is being pursued.
“Second, the attempt to compare President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s loans to Makinde’s reckless borrowing is a failed argument. Nigeria as a nation borrows for survival and macroeconomic stability. Every state in the federation, including Oyo, benefits directly from the loans secured at the federal level. To equate national borrowing with one governor’s secretive plundering of a state treasury is nothing but intellectual dishonesty.
“Third, to say “149 billion will be used to offset old loans” is an admission of failure on its own. Why are we recycling debt upon debt with no visible improvement in education, healthcare, agriculture, and rural infrastructure? Where are the results of the billions already borrowed in the past? Why are our schools collapsing, hospitals underfunded, and local governments reduced to beggars if Makinde is such a “financial wizard”?
“Fourth, instead of addressing the substance of Hon. Shittu’s whistleblowing, PDP cheerleaders prefer to mock him for being “always absent.” That is a cheap shot that cannot erase the fact that Shittu remains the only courageous voice in a House of Assembly that has been reduced to a rubber stamp choir for one man. History will vindicate him long after the sycophants have been forgotten.
“Fifth, the so-called “press statement” from the governor’s media office was nothing but weak damage control. It failed woefully to provide convincing details about the loan structure, repayment plan, or the true cost implications for the people of Oyo State. Instead, it resorted to gaslighting, name-calling, and half-truths. If the loan was as noble as they now claim, why was it done secretly until Shittu exposed it?
“Lastly, the propaganda that “Oyo people will never go back to APC” is the same arrogance that has blinded PDP in the past. Let it be clear: APC is not dead in Oyo State. A party that once produced a governor who brought visible infrastructural development, modernized Ibadan, and placed Oyo on the national map cannot be dismissed by empty insults. Unlike Makinde’s government of noise and propaganda, APC’s legacies are still standing.
“Governor Seyi Makinde is fast becoming the first governor in Oyo history to push the state towards a trillion-naira debt profile—and that will be his legacy. Oyo people should prepare because when the music stops, it is not Makinde and his cronies that will suffer; it is the masses, the civil servants, the traders, and the unborn generations.
“So let the Makinde apologists continue their Trophy-beer celebrations. The truth remains: this N300 billion loan is scandalous, reckless, and dangerous. And history will not forgive those who kept silent while the future of Oyo was mortgaged for political showmanship.”