Ize-Iyamu: Edo is Back in the Stone Age
The governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party in Edo State, Mr. Osagie Ize-Iyamu recently gave an update on his gubernatorial ambition, where he situated some of the issues that are germane to the contest. And in spite of the hurdles before h
The reason you were elected was to correct what you felt was wrong with the PDP administration and you have eight years to effect that correction. If after 8 years, you are still complaining, it means that you have no clue. I can understand you are complaining a year or two after, but eight years after you are still blaming PDP, then, it means that you are not the right person for the job
You sounded so optimistic and confident about winning this election, despite the fact that you are contesting against the ruling party both at the state and the federal level. What could have informed such optimism? I honestly believe that by the grace of God if we have a free election, PDP will win this state. The reason is obvious. The present APC government in Edo has not done well. They have had the opportunity to prove themselves in eight years – for two terms. Today, people are very disillusioned and very dissatisfied. Just some days ago, our pensioners went to protest at the Government House. Even though the governor was in his office, he refused to see them. He refused to grant them access but it is interesting to hear what he said.
The pensioners mentioned that many of them have not received their entitlements and that in the past seven months at least nine pensioners had died because of the frustrations and sufferings they were going through. The pensioners are a critical number in the state. They have families and dependants and I can bet you that with this situation, a majority of the pensioners will not vote for them even if they decide to start paying pensions now, which is not even possible.
To make it even more difficult, he (Oshiomhole) has closed the pension office, which means they cannot process pension papers and send to him. Of course, these are experienced retired civil servants. They understand the game the governor is playing. Judicial service workers have not been paid their entitlements for over a year now. They went on strike, asking that government should obey the court ruling which says they should enjoy financial autonomy.
Even when they called off their strike, the governor declared that their entitlements should not be paid for the period they were on strike and it runs into months. The judicial workers, as at today, are complaining. Students who voted for him believing that he would make education more accessible, not only has he reduced the standards of education, he has increased school fees. So, on what basis are students going to vote for him?
Okada riders, who were at the forefront of the agitation to get him re-elected into government, the moment he came in, he banned them. But worse was the fact that he does not plan for them. There is no attempt to create an alternative for them. The only people he employed throughout his tenure were those youths he took under Edo Youth Empowerment Scheme. The moment the second term election was in the kitty, he sacked them – over 7,000 youths. They are not going to vote for him.
The farmers of the state are not going to vote for him. So, who are the people that will vote for him apart from his party members? Even within his party, look at the way he has conducted himself. A man, who openly accused his deputy of planning to assassinate him, you can imagine the gravity of such an allegation. His deputy was attacked in his own local government, yet not one word of condemnation or sympathy from Oshiomhole.
So, even his party is a divided house. Our confidence is the fact that he has failed woefully and you can see that every campaign he has gone to, rather than show Edo people his scorecard, he has resorted to name-calling; insulting Ize-Iyamu, insulting Chief Tony Anenih and everybody in PDP. But the truth about it is that PDP is no longer in government. So, to continue to talk about the PDP when they were in government many years ago is laughable.
The reason why you were elected was to correct what you felt was wrong with the PDP administration and you have eight years to effect that correction. If after 8 years, you are still complaining, it means that you have no clue. I can understand you are complaining a year or two after, but eight years after you are still blaming PDP, then, it means that you are not the right person for the job.
Edo people sincerely believe that Adams Oshiomhole knows nothing about governance. It was a tragic mistake to have allowed such a person to be the governor of a state. At the best, maybe one of our unions can make him chairman but certainly, not the governor of Edo State. So, I can assure you that we believe we will win. If you take your mind back to the 2015 presidential election, APC was demystified in Edo, which has resulted in PDP having two out of three senators.
We have five out nine members of the House of Representatives. Many people do not know that of the 17 local governments that were announced in that election, PDP won 15 while APC managed to win only two. That result tells a story. I believe that in the forthcoming gubernatorial election, if the election was free and fair, I think PDP will do better than what they did during the presidential election.
At what point did the Edo people realise that Oshiomhole was a mistake, having voted for him twice? To be honest with you, in the first term, a lot of people applauded him. There appeared to be a lot of work in progress. Let me reveal something a lot of people are not aware of. The greatest achievement of Oshiomhole in his first term was the cosmetic renovation of schools. I call it cosmetic because when you renovate schools and there are no chairs or tables, no science laboratories, no teachers’ classrooms, then it is cosmetic. But even that renovation was a UBE scheme. Eighty-five of the schools that were renovated were primary schools under the UBE scheme.
The UBE scheme was an initiative by former President Goodluck Jonathan. Under that scheme, the then PDP-led federal government contributed 60 per cent of the funds that were used for that renovation. What many people did not realise was that the 40 per cent counterpart funding that Edo State government brought was actually contributed by Professor Oserhiemen Osunbor, a PDP governor before the court removed him as governor. Before Osunbor left office, he had paid the 40 per cent needed to access the 60 per cent.
So, when Oshiomhole came in as governor, he had billions waiting for him because the federal government had just released the money. After that money was spent, what has happened? His second term is almost over, how many schools were being renovated during his second term? The reason is not far-fetched. The counterpart funding was not paid so, the federal government did not release money. His second term has been a disaster. On road construction, when you do one road people will expect that another one is coming, but the roads were deliberately chosen to deceive.
He deliberately chose roads that a casual visitor will want to pass through without going deep into the city. So, if you land at Benin airport and you drive to Government House, and then you drive back to the airport, you might have a very good impression about Benin on the state of roads. But if you take the pains to go outside the city, you will find out that the roads that have been done are less than three per cent. It will shock you to know that the road to the palace is in a deplorable condition.
If not for the rains, I have contacted a construction company to go and fix it because it was a disgrace. We are planning a coronation of the new Oba. Visitors are coming into the state and the road to the palace is impassable. If the road leading to the Oba’s palace is bad, you can imagine other roads. Before he came in as governor, we had pipe-borne water. Ikpoba River Dam was functional. Ojirabi Dam was functional. Today, they are no more. Even the pipes that were procured with ADP loans for the Benin water expansion, they have mysteriously disappeared.
We have been told that they were sold but the money is nowhere to be found in government coffers and nobody has raised any eyebrows about it. In the course of rehabilitating the so-called roads, a lot of water pipes were destroyed. For any government now to bring water to Benin, it’s going to cost trillions because all the pipes for water have been destroyed. For the first time, we now have a government that has no plan for pipe borne water. Everybody in Edo now have to rely on self-help; either you can sink a borehole, go to the River or wait for the rain to come.
We are back to the Stone Age in Edo and that is why you can imagine the kinds of diseases that we have because the waters from the boreholes were not tested or treated. So, in the absence of water, light, jobs, what is going to make Edo to be interested in the continuity of this government? The second term has been a disaster and Edo people cannot wait to push him out. In fact, they were hoping that the election which was done four years ago will be in July. They were very disappointed when INEC announced that the election will be in September. So, everyday, Edo people are waiting; they are counting the days. Every Edo worker wants this government to exit and they are praying frantically for that Election Day.