Philip Shaibu, the deputy governor of Edo State, has been denied access to his office at Government House in Benin, the state capital, on the grounds that he has not yet received a formal letter from the governor’s office, which he claims is the appropriate channel to transmit a directive regarding the relocation to a new office.
The gate leading to his office was locked when Shaibu arrived at the Government House on Monday morning, he says: “Up till now, I don’t have any official communication that I should relocate. The only people that have official communication are my civil servants. The civil servants have official communication but I don’t. As I am speaking to you now, I am standing by the gate,” he said while on a phone call to a yet-to-be-identified person.
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The Permanent Secretary, Office of the Deputy Governor, allegedly received a letter last week purporting to be from the Head of Service’s office, Anthony Okungbowa, ordering Shuaibu to move to a new office at No. 7, Dennis Osadebey Avenue, GRA, Benin City bhe new office, according to sources close to Edo’s second-ranking citizen, is abandoned and in desperate need of renovation.
The governor of Edo State has not yet responded to the news, but according to people close to him, Shaibu has moved his office from inside the Government House to a new site outside the building, where he was not anticipated to be.
They added that the Deputy Governor was not anticipated in the Government House on Monday because there was no meeting arranged for that day.
They claimed that if a meeting had been planned, preparations would have been made so that the Deputy Governor could have attended.
