Edo APC Mocks Obaseki-led PDP on Breakdown of State Public Sector

Adibe Emenyonu in Benin City

The Edo State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) yesterday alleged that the public sector in the state had broken down.

Addressing a press conference at the party secretariat in Benin City, State chairman of the APC, Col David Imuse (rtd) said Governor Godwin Obaseki was celebrating phantom projects while his counterparts across the country were commissioning development projects just as he alleged that he had sunk the state into an incurable debt profile.

Imuse said, “Edo state has been left to drift. The educational system, for example, is in a coma while the health services sector has collapsed. Infrastructures are at various levels of fermentation while insecurity has become the order of the day. “Pensioners are being deprived of their legitimate earnings while local governments administration have been rendered useless and dysfunctional by his decision not to conduct elections of chairmen and councilors.

 “It is the same government that has plunged Edo into debts and is now planning to take additional loans.

“Without a state legislature, Mr. Obaseki has since he assumed office for a second term increased the domestic debt of the state by an additional N50 billion, from N81, 750,262,718.83 in 2021. This is exclusive of State’s foreign debt of over $280million from available records.

“In December 2020, he sponsored a N25 billion Fixed Rate Senior Guaranteed Series 1 Bond Issuance and guaranteed by an Irrevocable Standing Payment Order (ISPO) on Edo State’s revenue issued by the State Ministry of Finance.

“In November last year, he again took an N18.7 billion loan from the Central Bank of Nigeria. Now Mr. Obaseki wants to take a new N7 Billion loan to finance its scam of a Light up Edo project, which in Benin City has seen the repainting of a few street light poles.

 “Unfortunately, these loan transactions are done covertly and for nebulous projects whose scopes, utilities, locations and contractors are largely vague.”

He said the APC was prepared with all structures in place from the state, local governments, wards and units to win back the state.

But in a reaction, the Commissioner for Communication and Orientation, Adaze Emwanta, described the APC and its chairman as jesters who lacked the capacity to appreciate what is good for the people.

Emwanta said Obaseki remained committed to fulfilling the MEGA (Making Edo Great Again) manifesto which he said was endorsed by the people of Edo State in the September 19 2020 election. 

“The baggage of lies of the lmuse-led Edo APC is never empty of mischief. The lie lmuse concocted that the Edo State Government is about to source for a N7 billion facility from the capital market to fund an already completed street light project can only come from an idle mind that is remotely controlled by the devil.

“Why didn’t Imuse talk about the Ossiomo Independent power plant, the Edo tech park, the new civil service buildings with fibre optic connectivity, the long stretch of newly constructed roads leading to the new towns in the lrhirhi-Aruogba – Ogheghe axis, the Ugboha water project, and the gains recorded by the Edo Geographic Information Service in encouraging transparent land administration in the state?”