- Made zero naira from guest houses, sourced 40% of IGR from school fees in Q1 2025
By Adebayo Adedeji
The Osun State budget performance report of Q1 2025 raises concerns about the Senator Ademola Adeleke government’s commitment to fiscal probity. For want of time, this review will focus on the government’s reliance on IGR from school fees at a time revenue from informal sector taxes and other sources depleted.
It is no longer news that the yearly expenditure for the office of Governor Ademola Adeleke leaped from N4.8 billion, when the government was inaugurated in 2022, to N24.5 billion in 2024, signifying that the governor spent N44 billion in 2023 and 2024 alone. What is news is that in just Q1 of 2025, the governor had also lavished on his office N11.6 billion, representing 29.3% of the total projection of N38 billion for his office in the year. While the governor gulped this much, only miserable N9.8 million, representing 5.5% of N178 million earmarked for the Osun State Agency for Control of Aids (OSACA) was released. The government also released N141 million, representing 9.2%, of the N1.5 billion budgeted for the Amotekun security outfit in the year. Similar poor treatment was meted out to the Osun State Emergency Management Agency as only N56 million, translating to 9% of the estimate of N629 million for the year, was cash-backed as at the end of first quarter of 2025.
However, what is more concerning is that while the governor and his team ate, drank and enjoyed luxury lifestyle in the government house with huge N11.6 billion, they were too complacent to know that the revenue due to the state was frittered away under questionable circumstances. The leading opposition party in the state, the All Progressives Congress (APC), has consistently accused the governor of running a massive corruption cartel where the people’s resources are diverted to line the pockets of state actors. The Q1 budget implementation report seems to have validated the claim of the opposition party.
Whereas the state projected to make N620,000 from guest houses, the state made zero naira in the first quarter of the year. Again, the state only realized paltry N819,000 ( less than N1 million ), representing 0% of the N5.2 billion expected from Hotel occupancy and restaurant consumption tax for the year. The state also made merely N83.4 million from the projected revenue of N8.1 bilIion from commercial activities. In contrast, during the administration of Alhaji Adegboyega Oyetola in 2022, Osun earned N31 million from guest houses. Is it not sensible to query while the government would project N620,000 revenue from guest houses in 2025 when the defunct government three years ago made N31 million from the same revenue line?
The good spirited citizens should demand accountability from the bumbling governor, telling him to his face that no noble leader would sit idly, eating and drinking and dancing while school children are suffocated by charlatans and political shylocks ruling them. That the Adeleke government sourced N7 billion, constituting 40 % of its N18 billion IGR in Q1 2025, indicates something is fundamentally wrong with the government of the dancing senator.
