Edo Is On The Path Of Progress

 

 

 

 

Eric Osagie, Special Adviser on Public Affairs and Strategy to Edo State Governor, spoke to DESMOND UTOMWEN on the level of decadence inherited by the new administration and the quality of personnel appointed by Governor Adams Oshiomhole to confront the mounting challenges

 

 

 

Q: Almost 100 days into the administration of Governor Oshiomhole, there are mixed reactions about his performance. How has it been so far?
A: So far, so good. The people of Edo State don’t have any iota of doubt that they have a visionary governor in the saddle. The people are more convinced now that they made the right choice when they gave their overwhelming support and mandate to the Comrade Governor. This is evident in the purposefulness and focus displayed by the government in the last two months, especially in laying a solid foundation for proper take-off. He is taking the issue of education very seriously because he believes that education in this state is in a complete state of decay. It is in shambles and there is no way kids who pass through these schools will not end up as miscreants. So he is committed to reforming the educational system and action is already being taken. Also, he is tackling the issue of youth unemployment. He has set up machinery to employ up to 10,000 Edo citizens. The turn-out by the people has shown that they buy into the idea.

Edo used to be first in sport, but this has gone down. So he is giving this much attention. A sport committee set up by him has come up with a blueprint for sport development in the state. In his bid to find out the state of affairs, he has set up an Assets Verification Committee and what has been discovered so far shows that there has been systematic looting of the state treasury. The discovery has been mind-boggling. For instance, over N2 billion went down the drain at the Edo Water Board now referred to as the Edo Watergate. There are so many cans of worms. There are contractors who collected monies and did not do the job. What you will see is general squandermania. People just went berserk and began to attack the government coffers: through phantom projects, using non-existing companies. So what the Governor did was to start by taking stock. This is necessary because if you rush, you will get it wrong, especially in a place like Edo where we inherited a failed state plundered by some past leaders. The Governor doesn’t want to fail. He is systematic and clear-headed. Remember, he who fails to plan, plans to fail. The issue of roads is also worrisome. Our roads are simply impassable; in fact the roads do not exist at all. You have people subjected to the pains of flood, which take over their homes and roads. The Governor has been on the streets physically for on-the-spot assessment. He is not a desk man; by 7.45am he is on the streets to see things for himself. He is always there wherever his attention is needed. He doesn’t believe in just treating files and people coming to lie to him on paper while the work suffers in the field. He has seen that there are categories of people who collected money for jobs and went to sleep, while some got jobs and they do not have the expertise needed for the job and today they pretend to be working. The activities of the Assets and Verification Committee are seen as witch-hunt of some people.

It is only in this country that people politicise everything. When you try to do the right thing as it is done in civilised places, people will read all kinds of motive to it. What is witch-hunt in saying, let us verify the assets they claimed they left behind? What is witch-hunt in saying, let us assess the state of affairs as at when we took over? Don’t forget, there was no proper handover and we do not want to make mistakes and it is after the committee had gone to work that it was discovered that the state was systematically looted by the past administration. Should they have kept quiet when they found the General Manager of the Water Board could not honestly and convincingly account for how over N2 billion was spent; when contacts were dished out purely as political patronage and no value is gotten for money? Do you keep quiet so that people don’t say you are witch-hunting? No. The money belongs to the state and the people must know how their resources have been well or badly managed. And if letting the people know that state resources have not been judiciously used is witch-hunt, so be it. But I can tell you that the Comrade Governor is not on a witch-hunt exercise and cannot close his eyes to brazen looting of the state coffers.

 

 

 

Q: How right is it that the Comrade who used to fight for the right of workers is now sending them home?
A: The Comrade Governor has not sent any worker home arbitrarily. He has not violated the right of a single worker in the state. In fact he has been and is still the chief defender of worker rights in Edo. This is the story of his life – fighting for workers, the masses and the downtrodden. He is now in a position to turn things around. The General Manager of Edo City Transport Services, ECTS, said the workers were dumped on him by past government. This was in a bid to run down the company. There were recommendations to this effect. And because a worker is in charge of government does not mean that workers who are not working should be allowed to be excess baggage. But if the cases are reviewed and then are some who had good cases, it will be revisited. The fact is that the Comrade Governor loves workers and will fight for them always but will not bend the rules. He will stick to the right thing always. We know some people are bent on distracting the government and are trying to make a mountain out of a molehill regarding the ECTS matter. Yet an illegal government in the state sacked over 300 workers recently and nobody uttered a word because the people talking now wanted some kind of patronage from that government. With a Comrade in power, the workers are protected.

 

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