BY Samuel Akpan
Doyin Odebowale, special adviser on special duty and strategy to Rotimi Akeredolu, governor of Ondo, has explained why his principal works from Oyo instead of Ondo.
Akeredolu returned to Nigeria in the first week of September after a three-month medical leave in Germany.
The governor who landed in Ibadan, the Oyo capital, has since been working from the state.
However, the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has repeatedly criticised the governor for working from Ibadan, demanding his resignation if he cannot return to Ondo.
On Monday, security operatives had to quell a PDP protest in Akure, the Ondo capital, against Akeredolu’s remote work situation.
Speaking when he featured on Politics Today, a Channels TV programme, on Tuesday, Odebowale said plans for the governor to return to Ondo are underway.
“Aketi came back in September. Where he used to stay – the presidential lodge built for the visiting president at that time Olusegun Obasanjo — is a two-bedroom apartment,” he said.
“Now, he is back. He cannot occupy that place again. The old governor’s office, the governor’s lodge built by the previous administration is now the office of the investment outlet called the ODIPA. That’s the office.
“So, the governor has been managing a two-bedroom apartment for six years. But his current state of health would not permit him to pretend that all is well.
“He would need all the things for him to recover properly. That’s why the new place that is being arranged for him is almost completed.”
Odebowale said it doesn’t do the state any good for critics to threaten to take to the streets to protest the governor’s absence from the state.
“When they say they want to see Aketi, do they want to see him at the site so that he would be carrying cement or following workmen? What exactly?,” he said.
“The civil servants have been paid all their salaries. Aketi has been signing laws since he came back.
“PDP cannot ask the governor to show his face and if the so-called youths of the PDP believed that they reserve the right to move to the street to protest against a ruling party, APC and you want to know where the governor is, for what?”
Odebowale said the governor is in charge of the state and is “recuperating and convalescing”, adding that he will return to Ondo at the appropriate time.
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