By Charles Segun Adegbite
Leadership position requires accountability, so public officials must be accountable. How did U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson get money to renovate his official flat in Downing Street?
This is what is generating controversy now, following reports that it cost £200,000 and it is still not clear where the money came from.
Of course, this is currently bringing pressure on the PM to explain how he funded it. Mr Johnson however said he paid for the flat personally but failed to deny that some of the money came from Tory donor Lord Brownlow.
Political Watchdogs
To this end the UK political spending watchdog, Electoral Commission has launched an investigation into how the U.K's head of government, Mr Johnson, funded the refurbishments to his official residence.
According to www.theguardian.com "...he grapples with trying to brush off investigations and preventing Labour's "sleaze" label sticking before local elections next month"
Cause of Controversy
That the PM renovated his official residence wasn't the real subject of controversy but the Daily Mail report that the refurbishment gulped £200,000, whereas the British Prime Minister is given £30,000 of taxpayers' money a year to renovate the official residence during their term.
Additional cause of the controversy was that a Tory peer and party donor, Lord David Brownlow of Shurlock Row, funded part of the excess, among other issues.
A lot of issues that came out after this development suggested that government headed by him had something to hide.
This obviously was the reason the Electoral Commission probing him said in a statement, “We are now satisfied that there are reasonable grounds to suspect that an offense or offenses may have occurred,”
“We will therefore continue this work as a formal investigation to establish whether this is the case.”
Meanwhile the Prime Minister and his allies have defended his behavior and strongly denied the allegations.
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