Agbowo Shopping Complex: How Makinde Killed Bcos, Gave Our Heritage To Whitestone Global For 50 Years ||By David Oluokun
Governor Seyi Makinde’s confession during his controlled media chat with Isaac Brown of Fresh FM has once again exposed his intolerance for free press and his monumental administrative failure.
It is no longer news that Makinde has systematically killed the state-owned media house, Broadcasting Corporation of Oyo State (BCOS), rendering it comatose and irrelevant, so that he can avoid public scrutiny. That is why he now runs to private, controlled media outfits like Fresh FM where questions are rehearsed and answers are stage-managed.
And in that same controlled chat, Makinde shamelessly declared that he needs #21 Billion to complete the Agbowo Shopping Complex modernization/renovation or he will abandon the moribund project.
This is the same Agbowo Shopping Complex he hurriedly gave out in 2019 to an unknown company named Whitestone Global Limited for 50 whole years, with the company supposedly to inject #4.9 Billion.
Seven years after, what do we have to show for it? Nothing!
Agbowo Shopping Complex, once the pride of Ibadan, once a bustling commercial hub that provided livelihood for thousands of Oyo State indigenes, has been turned into a ghost complex, an abandoned monument of Makinde’s failure, overgrown with weeds and occupied by reptiles and miscreants.
The questions every reasonable Oyo State citizen should be asking are:
1. Why kill BCOS? Makinde deliberately killed BCOS because a vibrant state media would have exposed this Agbowo fraud from day one. He prefers controlled media chats where no one can challenge him.
2. Who owns Whitestone Global Limited? Since 2019, Oyo State people have not seen any meaningful work done by this company. Who are they? What is their capacity? Why give a strategic state asset to them for 50 years?
3. Where is the #4.9 Billion? Whitestone was supposed to inject #4.9 Billion. Where is the money? What was it used for? Has any audit been done?
4. From #4.9 Billion to #21 Billion? How did a project that was supposed to gulp #4.9 Billion in 2019 now suddenly need #21 Billion in 2026? This is pure scam, inflation of figures, and a clear sign that the initial concession was fraudulent and not well thought out.
This is the hallmark of the Makinde administration: mortgage Oyo State assets to unknown companies for 50 years, collect little or nothing, abandon the people, kill state institutions like BCOS that should hold government accountable, and then go on Fresh FM to threaten that he will abandon the project if we don’t give him #21 Billion.
If Makinde cannot manage the renovation of a shopping complex for Seven years, if he cannot supervise a simple PPP arrangement with Whitestone Global Limited, how can he manage Nigeria with over 200 million people and a complex economy?
A leader who kills his own state media house because he is afraid of accountability, who concessions a prime asset for 50 years to a company with no verifiable track record, and who now wants to abandon the project after six years of failure, is not fit to be Governor, talk less of dreaming to be President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Oyo State deserves better. Nigeria deserves better than an abandonment specialist.
David Oluokun is the Oyo Coordinator BSA VOICE OF REASON MEDIA & RHAIN
