The Oyo State Government has explained the demolition of billboards across the state capital in the last one week, stating that it was one of the efforts of the government at cleaning up the filthy signage environment of the state and to beef up what it called the hemorrhaging Internally Generated Revenue of the state.
The government made this known in a statement issued by the Special Adviser to Governor Abiola Ajimobi on Media, Dr. Festus Adedayo.
The Peoples Democratic Party in the state, whose lone billboard was involved in this exercise, had weekend accused the combined security outfit in the state, named Operation Burst, of illegal demolition of the party’s property.
According to the government, the Ajimobi administration inaugurated the Oyo State Signage and Advertisement Agency after its being passed into law by the state House of Assembly in January 2012 and appointed as its Director General Mr. Yinka Adepoju, a seasoned executive of the prestigious Advertisement Practitioners Council of Nigeria.
The government said that it discovered that the planlessness of signage in the state, which it inherited from the previous government, was not only one of the issues responsible for the inherited filthy nature of the state, but that its unorganised nature was an avenue for ample IGR that should come to the purse of the state government taking flight.
The statement explained that immediately the agency took off, the state government made adequate explanation of its intention, which was duly communicated to the stakeholders.
According to government, OYSAA not only held meetings with signage stakeholders but it also, last week, made public announcements in the media at the outset of its embarking on demolition of badly maintained billboards, which littered the whole of the state.
The government said that in the last one week, OYSAA had brought down about 1,000 badly maintained billboards throughout the state capital, including one belonging to the state governor located at Mokola in Ibadan, one belonging to the state’s First Lady at Agodi and about 10 billboards belonging to the ruling Action Congress of Nigeria in the state.
“The demolition of the PDP billboard is just one of about a thousand billboards brought down by OYSAAA, in government’s bid to sanitise signage in the state and shore up revenue accruing to government,” the government said.