Text From Chief Dan Orbih's Press Conference Tagged "Our Today Our Tomorrow"

The Peoples Democratic Party, Edo State, through its chairman, Dan Orbih, weekend addressed a press conference tagged "Our today our tomorrow," on the stewardship of Governor Adams Oshiomole. Excerpts from his address in prints below.

My good people of Edo State, Party faithful, my esteemed gentlemen of the press, ladies and gentlemen.  Celebration marking the first year anniversary of Governor Adams Oshiomole and his Action Congress rule, have been taking place in government circles of which the governor has addressed the state several times in his three days celebration.

We are also meeting here today at a time when we have found ourselves at a cross-road in Edo history.  It is a time when you can go to any of our villages or city centres or town hall meetings and hear the same anxiety about our future; hear them convey the same uncertainty about the direction we are headed as a state.

Whether it is the demolition of their economic strongholds, the failed educational system which has suffered incremental decline or our health care system which has gone comatose, you hear people mourn that we have finally arrived a moment where things have never gone so bad in our history.

Yet Governor Oshiomhole has managed to paint a different picture of this deplorable situation in the State, typifying that he is really a stranger in a State he purports to govern. 

The governor and his quislings who have presided over the State for one year have been about town mouthing the point that they have turned the State around.  Those who beg to differ on this point the governor has boasted are the strangers in the State, and not himself

We have therefore been confronted with two types of reality. 

One, the governor presents an imaginary picture of life abundance and the other, the masses painting a gloomy scenario of spreading poverty and its consolidation, as they have known nothing but hardship for the past one year.

Among his said achievements are:

That he has rehabilitated 35 urban roads in the State.  That he has been demarcating and planting flowers at the Ring Road.  That he has employed 3,500 workers in the State and that he has through his Machiavellian tax drive, improved the internally generated revenue (IGR) with about 300 percent.  His other achievements are that he has been successful in his ambition to retire Chief Tony Anenih from politics.  Good talk.

Gentlemen of the press the ball then falls in your court. Before I proceed, let me once again use this opportunity to thank and congratulate you on your heroic support for the cause of the ordinary People of Edo State in the time past, with your unbiased journalism even in the face of the huge temptations from the people saddled with the state resources.  In your flux, they combined the timely concern of a journalist on a beat, with the witty pedantry of a novelist and the data promiscuity of an academic.

One may wish to ask where are the roads? He has patched 32 spots. The Ring road Benin City has been with us for ages, the question now is, is the demarcation, planting of flowers and the demolition of the poor masses structures, without due compensations our achievement for the one year in office? From available statistics today, an average of ten families is displaced in Benin City everyday. 

Even the 3,500 workers that is claimed to have been employed we are yet to be told whether their remuneration are in consonance with their qualifications and with the civil services regulations.

You may also wish to know that in pursuant of deliberate falsehood, corruption, and a tendency for embezzlement, Adams Oshiomhole has told the people that it is costing him One point two Billion Naira (N1.2 Billion Naira) to plant flowers, shrubs, and curbs at the Ring Road and to put flower beds at Akpakpava Road.

You may wish to recollect that (this was principally an Osunbor’s administration executed project) this which reliable expert opinion puts the total cost at one hundred and fifty Million Naira (N150 Million). The question again is, ‘what does Oshiomhole intend to do with the balance One Billion Naira?’

ON PDP RULING THE STATE

Gentlemen of the press, I am happy to note that you are not strangers especially to what has transpired in the past ten years and over in this state. 

It is true that the PDP through popular votes won the State in 1999 gubernatorial elections. But it is also very correct that, the same bad elements along with Oshiomhole that ruled the state then, are today the same dramatists that took over the reigns of government.

So suffice it to say that for the past ten-years and over it has been the same clique, the same recycled faces and the same set of people that have ruled the State.

Paradoxically for fear of facing their iniquities they rallied round and constituted what is today known as the Action congress in the state.

This perhaps explains why Edo people are not expecting anything good from the Adams Oshiomhole’s government.

You may recall that at the inception of Adams Oshiomhole’s rule last year (2008) he presented a budget of N75 Billion Naira to the House of Assembly for consideration according to the Constitution.

The budget was submitted on February 16, 2009 and passed for him by the State House of Assembly on March 19, 2009. He refused to assent to it and re-submitted it to the House of Assembly about two weeks later on April 2, 2009.

The House in its wise counsel speedily passed the budget on April 16, 2009. This is perhaps the fastest passage of a budget in our recent times.

Sadly, from our analysis of the budget, the performance is less than five percent (5%) implementation. The entire major sectors of Works, Education, Agriculture and Energy which aught to have direct impact on the people of Edo State ended in abysmal failure.

Ladies and gentlemen, the question on the lips of every Edo electorate is: what has happened to this budget? Never in the history of this State has it been so cursed by a pack of idlers and happy–go–Lucky people as rulers, and majority of whom parade false credentials.

You may also recall that at the inception of this administration, it was clear that there was no clear-cut policies and still does not seem to be one, but desirous of fulfilling his fancy idea as the most travelled Governor in Nigeria, Oshiomhole began in endless peregrination of the globe while the affairs of the state was left to the imagination of half–a-penny Commissioners and Advisers. 

At the last count in his one year in office, Oshiomhole has travelled out of the state over twenty times (making over seven months he has spent out of office).  Little wonder that he is less informed about the state of infrastructure and other developmental index in the state.

From his records, in the same period under review he has received a whopping sum of Fifty Two Billon, two hundred and Sixty One Million, Eight Hundred and Ten Thousand, Four Hundred and Sixty Eight Naira, Thirty Two Kobo (N52,261,810,468, 32k) from both statutory allocation, internally generated revenue, and special release from the excess crude oil account.

The breakdown is as follows;

EDO STATE STATUTORY ALLOCATIONS AND THE INTERNALLY GENERATED REVENUE FOR THE MONTHS OF NOVEMBER 2008 TO OCTOBER 2009

SUMMARY

Statutory Allocations From

November 2008 to October 2009                                            N34,943,695,244.73

Internally Generated Revenue From

November 2008 to October 2009                                            N8,519,474,781.50

Special Release from Excess Crude Account                          N8,798,640,442.09

Grand Total                                                                                                 N52,261,810,468.32

Another question is, where is this sum of money? Was it expended on those his numerous trips? The electorate deserves to know.

Let us commend the  Governor for admitting to Edo People that he has made a savings of N13.5 Billion Naira and that he has also spent N14.5 Billion for Salaries and a few capital projects. Another question we are putting to him is to tell Edo People where the balance N25 Billion Naira is? Or are we also to believe that it has been expended on his numerous junkets all over the world?

We are told that as copy cats of the Government of Lagos State, we must learn to endure the demolition that has no human face and whereas the Lagos State we are copying initiated their policy programmes over a decade ago with enough financial compensation.

Gentlemen of the press, you may wish to know that while there are enough qualified contractors in Edo State including those from his political party (the Action Congress,) most of the contractors hired to demarcate the Ring Road including those planting even the flowers are from his emerging godfathers, one from Lagos State, and another from Benin City, who by the way happened to be a principal Actor in Governor Lucky Igbenedion’s administration and recently Chairman of his one year Anniversary Committee. While yet another godfather from Kano State supplied the entire cement meant for the project. Is this lack of faith for his people?

Above all, have you taken time to ask our Governor who owns the three companies from South Africa that have been engaged to take care of the ICT project in the Government House and the design of the Edo State Master Plan?  It is a game of the more you look the less you see.

Today Adams Oshiomhole is not apologetic of this abysmal failure and show of shame, instead; we are told that our cries are somebody else’s faults.  We are distracted from these failures and we are told to rather blame them on the godfathers.

Gentlemen of the press, we are therefore moved to ask; why we have not been able to meet these challenges.  What has stopped us in these past twelve months; it cannot be the absence of the people’s will. 

What has hindered us is absolutely the failure of leadership, the logical deceit of the government, the littleness of Oshiomhole’ politics, the case which we are distracted by their chronic avoidance of tough decisions, the Governor’s phobia to run around capital cities of the world when files that need urgent attention are left unattended to, this instead of rolling up our sleeves and building a working consensus to tackle the problems of the state.

We are again constrained to ask:

 1).     When shall we have the Six-lane for the Airport Road

2).     Or will the Six-lane Benin – Ugbowo – Lagos Road ever come to be?

If you recall, Governor Adams Oshiomohle relentlessly organized and mobilized students to harass the State House of Assembly in order to pass the said budget in the period under review, whereas he never, and I repeat never made any provision for these two roads in the budget he submitted, which was the bone of contention between him and the House of Assembly. That is the self-proclaimed People’s Governor for you.

We strongly believe that it is a sheer waste of public funds to spend N2.5 Billion Naira on resurfacing Ekewan road Junction of Siluko road, when less than N50 Million is sufficient to fix the only failed portion of the road, above all, when the most important segment of the road that requires urgent intervention is between Textile Mill road junction to Egor Market section of the Road.

To be emphatic in the past twelve months, we did not witness any meaningful development and changes in Edo South Senatorial District of the State, where the Governor promised to spend most of this 2008 Budget. Instead, Oshiomohle has brought misery and pain upon the Bini Speaking People of the State with his mindless demolition of their homes and business premises without any compensation or alternative, even as his infamous Tax Policy has become the harshest in the whole country. Edo State Government has become a Government of taxation for the benefit of few officials and party men.

Let the message go forth from this occasion and this place, that never again shall this great party and indeed Edo people tolerate the rudderless and unconscionable leadership that the Government of Adams Oshiomohle exemplifies.

Come 2012, we promise Edo People a more purposeful but less painful approach to governance. The Peoples Democratic Party in Edo State is set on a modernizing mission, to put Edo State at the front burner of development in the comity of States in Nigeria. To this end, we shall partner with the Media as veritable agent of change to push fort our new perspectives of genuine development and we shall revalidate our socio economic contract with the good people of Edo State.

Finally, on behalf of the Peoples Democratic Party, let me appeal to the good people of Edo State to continue to be law abiding, with a view that what has a beginning also has an end.  For if we can endure the humiliation, frustration and the disillusionment of the past twelve months, I don’t see any reason why we cannot be patient for the next thirty six months when we shall have the franchise to place our political destiny in our hands and which no electoral robbers will take away from us again.