Edo State governor, Adams Oshiomhole
recently hosted journalists in his office
in Benin City where he spoke on the
achievements of his administration and
dispelled rumour of his presidential
ambition. He also shed light on the
crisis in the state’s House of
Assembly.
You are in the last quarter of your
administration, what should the people
of Edo State expect in the remaining
two years?
There are a couple of projects that are
ongoing and we will do everything to
ensure that these projects are completed.
We have the Benin City Storm Water
Master Plan, a project that has been
designed to deflood Benin. We’ve made
substantial progress, almost 60 to 65 per
cent, and I am very hopeful that we will
complete it. By the time we complete it, the
flooding problem would have been
substantially addressed. It won’t solve it
completely because there are other basins
that we have to do, so I hope the next
government will take up that burden. If we
had not embarked on the project, the
people would have been under water this
rainy season.
We are also working on the Central
Hospital and we are hopeful that we are
going to complete it. We’ve been assured
by the contractor handling the project that
the emergency unit would be ready by
January next year. My hope is that we will
install the latest state of the art medical
equipment. We want to have a signature
hospital with modern technology and
experts. We have Nigerians abroad who
are ready to come home to work here.
The hospital that we are building has
special units and it is designed to meet
current technology in the healthcare
sector. I am very proud of it and hopeful
that we will complete it. If we complete
that, then we would have good roads, good
drainage system, world-class hospital,
beautiful primary and secondary schools.
We wouldn’t have solved all the problems,
but I believe that we would have laid a
very solid foundation, which the future
government can build on.
Some of your colleagues are
complaining of shortfall in revenue
from the Federal Government. Is this
not going to affect the projects, which
you intend completing before leaving
office?
It calls for serious worry, not just for the
states, but even for the Federal
Government because it is not paying
salaries as and when due. I just read that
National Assembly workers are protesting
non-payment of salaries. These are federal
employees, and no doubt some state
governments do also owe salaries running
into two to three months. By the time the
issue of subsidy was dealt with in one way
or the other and the consequent exposure
of the fraud that some persons perpetuated
in collaboration with some officials of
government agencies in the name of
subsidy, the character of the problem has
changed from subsidy to oil theft.
Government’s talk about oil theft appears
to have coincided with the end of subsidy
scam. There are still issues with the
amount that is allegedly paid as subsidy,
but crude oil theft has become a national
embarrassment. The last time we looked at
it in the Crude Oil Committee made up of
governors, officials of the Petroleum
Ministry, NNPC and the JTF, we saw that
sometimes we lose as much as 700,000
barrels per day. This is sometimes
sustained for a period of two weeks. At
times, we are told that not all are lost to oil
thieves but sometimes to vandals. But
those who vandalise pipelines don’t do it
for fun. It is either they are doing it to steal
crude oil or refined product, so all of these
still fall within categories of oil theft. And
you ask yourself the question: What has
changed in Nigeria’s territorial waters that
we didn’t hear about this volume of oil
theft during previous governments?
Though there was illegal bunkering then, it
wasn’t much to affect what accrued to the
federation account.
We have never received 100 per cent of our
share of the federation account even when
oil was performing at $108 per barrel and
the benchmark was $79 and later $78. So,
we are supposed to have huge savings of
about 40 per cent, and which means that
the Excess Crude Account by now should
be approaching $20 billion. As far as I
hear, there is nothing in the account; not
because we have shared any money, but
sometimes we are told that they have used
the money to fund Sure-P or subsidy
whether petrol or kerosene. But as far as I
know, the law is clear. You are not
supposed to fund Sure-P with the Excess
Crude Account; it is supposed to be meant
for savings from the additional money that
we are paying consequent of the marginal
increases in the prices of petroleum
products the last time.
Excess Crude ought to be funds that have
not been spent and can be spent only on
the authority of the stakeholders of the
account, which are the states and the
Federal Government because for every
dollar that accrues, the Federal
Government gets 52.8 per cent of it, while
all the 36 states and the Federal Capital
Territory (Abuja) share 26 per cent. So, the
Federal Government spends double of
what all the 36 states and the FCT get.
When you divide 26 by 37 because the
FCT is treated as a state for the purpose of
revenue allocation, what accrues to Edo
State is .0001 per cent. So, if we have built
roads, schools and hospitals, paid salaries
and provided water in Edo; that is what we
spend. So, Edo people want to see more of
federal presence in the state than the
presence of the state government. For
every one kilometre of road we have done,
the federal government ought to have done
two, because it is holding 52 per cent of
the revenue accruing to Nigeria on trust,
while the 36 state governors and the FCT
administration share 26 per cent.
For me, there is bound to be shock
because when you have a bumper harvest
and your children are starving; only God
can save you when you suffer famine or
draught. But, I have said to some people
that because they say necessity is the
mother of invention, who knows when the
situation is such that there is no oil for
thieves to take and you exhaust your
instrument of Central Bank financing
through bonds and others, you do not have
to be an economist to know that if the
price of oil drops, there would be crisis
everywhere. Obviously, everything the
Federal Government spends on capital
expenditure is borrowed, and that is why
the debt profile is very high at the moment.
So, I see the CBN resorting to the so-called
ways and means; that’s an economic
jargon, but what it means is that they will
print more bank notes, paper money to
meet the naira illusion because the hard
currency is not there. This means massive
devaluation of the nation’s currency and
that will trigger hyperinflation. When the
cost of living escalates, workers are going
to demand for higher wages to
compensate for falling purchasing power.
Some attempt to deal with this contingency
will lead to upward review of personnel
cost and you would have effectively found
yourself in a terrible vicious circle, and I
am worried about that.
Your party, the All Progressives
Congress (APC) recently alleged that
the shoddy distribution of the
Permanent Voter Cards is a precursor
to the plot by the ruling Peoples
Democratic Party (PDP) and the
Independent National Electoral
Commission (INEC) to rig the 2015
elections. What do you think can be
done to avert this and the crisis that
may trail the polls if they are rigged?
Under the NPN (National Party of Nigeria)
in the Second Republic, the culture of
rigging was entrenched and its leaders
became boisterous and arrogant. They
became so arrogant that they misled
themselves into believing that ‘any state
can fall’ to the then NPN. They tried this
trick in the then Ondo State, where the late
Akin Omoboriowo was proclaimed the
winner of an election that he had lost. He
had FEDECO (Federal Electoral
Commission) proclaim him as the winner,
but Ondo people said he was never known
to the electorate. You know that
Omoboriowo had a mandate but he has to
honourably surrender because he never
won it.
I think Nigerians are sufficiently committed
to democracy, so anybody who is working
on a strategy of rigging would be a poor
student of history. In any event, I think the
current president (Goodluck Jonathan) has
been very fortunate. He has been a deputy
governor, governor, vice president, acting
president and president to complete late
President Umaru Yar’Adua’s tenure and
elected on his own by votes cast across
Nigeria. Any Nigerian who has been
honoured with these positions has no
reason to be desperate. So, I expect him,
like I do myself, to look at where I am
coming from and where God has put me
and ask myself the question: What do I
want now? Whether I govern for 10 years
or two years, I was a governor or he was a
president. What people want to be
remembered for is not for how long the
governed but for what they did while in
government.
In fact, people are respected for bowing to
the wishes of their people than to be
damned for holding on to power against
the wishes of their people. We don’t need
to go out of the country to find a very
interesting and inspiring example. General
Abdulsalami Abubakar is one. He took
over following the sudden death of a head
of state, General Abacha, who came to
office and allowed himself to be deceived
by praise singers, who said that he was the
only person the cap fits. Try and play back
the advertorials on ‘Who the cap fits.’ All
the five political parties then found no one
within their folds to endorse apart from
General Abacha.
This issue of collecting signatories is also
not new. One Daniel Kanu organised the
infamous two million-man-march. Julius
Berger constructed a big platform with a
public address system in Abuja that when
they blew it, Nigerians, wherever they were
heard it. Every hungry political elite went
into that game and it is on record that one
of the most outstanding men who had the
courage to dismiss that make-belief was
the late Attorney General and Minister of
Justice, Chief Bola Ige. He described the
five parties then as five leprous fingers of
the same hand, and therefore, no descent
Nigerian should touch any of them.
To return to the issue of President
Jonathan, I believe that he is uniquely
placed and Nigerians have done him the
honour of holding the highest office in the
land; the first time by accident but the
second time through the conscious votes
of the people. Whether he wins or loses the
next election, what will define his place in
history is how the elections were
conducted. Today, President Robert
Mugabe is in power in Zimbabwe without
honour, whether at home or abroad. Like I
said earlier, General Abubakar
demonstrated how a leader can obey the
peoples’ will. Some people said he should
stay a bit longer, but he refused and went
ahead to organise elections and left under
one year. Though some people later tried
to rubbish him at the Oputa Panel, but
there is no village in Nigeria that he goes
that he is not respected. Nobody cares
what else he did; an African voluntarily
relinquishing power.
He was able to achieve a transition that
was impossible in more than five years. In
fact, a lot of people didn’t believe him, and
that was why most progressives did not
take part in the 1999 elections. Whatever
anyone would say, the diversity of Nigeria
was reflected in that election, as the three
parties that took part in it won some
states. Is General Abubakar not at peace
with himself? He is referred to whenever
issues of elections come up whether in
Africa or Europe. His selling point is that
he organised free and credible elections
and allowed power to go.
So, the place of a leader in the history of
any nation is not how long he held on to
power. If the president has good advisers,
he must resist the hawks in PDP, who
would be urging him to use the armed
forces to rig the 2015 election because it is
his place in history that is at stake. If he
governs for the next 20 years in the way of
Mugabe and lose the goodwill of Nigerians,
what would be his place? If on the other
hand, he leaves if Nigerians want him to
leave and hand over power to whoever
Nigerians want, his place in history will
still be golden. He has to choose how he
wants to be remembered. He has no
compelling reason to rig the next elections
and I pray that God will guide him to play
the statesman and not a petty politician.
Nigerians and the world are watching.
How long are you going to sit back as
governor and continue to tolerate the
crisis in Edo State House of Assembly,
especially the disregard for court
orders by some of the legislators?
It is not for me to tolerate because I am a
believer in the Rule of Law for several
reasons. First, if it is the survival of fittest,
physically, I am not the most endowed and
I cannot be the governor of this state,
where you have the big people. That I am
here is courtesy of the Rule of Law.
Secondly, when I was rigged out, God
favoured me with courageous judges, who
had the courage to interpret the law and
the character to resist corrupt practices. I
was declared winner both at the tribunal
and Appeal Court. So, I am a beneficiary of
the Rule of Law. Regardless of my
frustrations at times with legal procedures,
I have to learn to respect the principle of
separation of powers.
So, what we have to do is what we are
doing at the moment; that is to draw the
attention of the courts to the contempt by
some members of the Assembly. There are
people whose intention is to cause
disaffection in Edo State. The PDP saw the
last elections in the state; for the first time
in our history since the Mid-West was
created, I am on record, courtesy of God
and the goodwill of Edo people, as the first
governor to win an election in all the 18
local government areas in the state. It has
never happened before. In Edo South,
where I come from, I won in all the 77
wards. In Edo North, I won in all the 64
wards. In Edo Central, I won in about 95
per cent of the wards. It has never
happened in our history. That is why they
refer to my election as 18/18. So, I think
the PDP feels that I have exposed them by
the amount of work that I have done.
Edo people can extrapolate and imagine
what the lost in the 10 years of the PDP in
the state. If the PDP had done half of what
I had done in six years, I would have
started from where they stopped. We
started from zero minus to return to zero
zero. That was why the Esogban of Benin
Kingdom, Chief David Edebiri, said that
unless the PDP pays reparation to anyone
who knew what Edo was under the party
and what it is now, the PDP can never
smell victory in this state again. He has
also challenged the PDP to nominate those
members of the House of Assembly, who
are legislative merchants in 2015 and see
what Benin people do with traitors. The
PDP can plan all the evils, but as
Christian, I will say devil is a liar. They can
plan whatever they like, but I am telling
you that we will neutralise them and Edo
will not fall.
Some people are trying to lure you into
the 2015 presidential race though you
have come out to say that you are not
contesting. If your party calls you to be
the running mate to whoever picks its
ticket, will you consider it?
Let me tell you this straight; I don’t believe
in this tradition of some Nigerians, who
when they want something, will say that
they have been called upon by their people
or they are answering the call of their
people. Where did their people meet to call
them? When a leader assumes office, not
because he is convinced about it, but
because ‘people are pressurising him to
declare,’ that leader never makes it, and
that may explain some of the leadership
crisis we have in this country.
When I wanted to contest for governorship,
late Chief Gani Fawehinmi described me
as a lion, which has chosen to reduce
himself to a Lilliputian by contesting for a
governorship when he can contest for the
presidency. But, I went to him and said:
‘Sir, yes, I am clear about the problems of
Nigeria. After all, I have interacted with
power. Vertically and horizontally, I
understand the challenges and I believe
that I have what it takes, but the truth of
the matter is that my history in NLC did not
began in NLC. I started as a steward in a
textile factory. Then, I became the
Organising Secretary of the textile union
and rose to the position of General
Secretary of the union many years later
and then Deputy President of the NLC
before becoming the President.’
So, for me and looking at the practical
realities on ground, popularity is one thing,
but converting that popularity to political
asset requires some work and time, and
critical to that work is time and money.
Gani told me that people would contribute
for my campaign; but, I said that we would
even need time to raise the fund. I also told
him that I was not going to make a
difference if I joined a ruling party that I
had fought when I was in the NLC, and that
the only party, which could offer me its
presidential ticket, is the Labour Party,
which the NLC formed. But, we had just
formed it and we had not yet created
structures. I left the NLC on February 25,
2007 and elections were to take place in
April, two months later, there was no
miracle we could do.
I am a realist, so I apply myself in full
when I want to do anything. I contested for
the governorship because I was convinced
about it, not for what people wanted me to
do. It was about what I believed I could do.
So, for the Presidency of Nigeria; after
taking into account all the geo-political
sentiments, I am convinced that the time is
not auspicious for me to step out and bid
for the position. Once I had arrived at this
decision, and not that I don’t have what it
takes, I decided that under my signature, I
must put a stop to the speculation about
running for the presidency. On the issue of
Vice Presidency, you and I know that no
one contests for the position of Vice
President. My current Deputy did not
contest for the position of Deputy
Governor. I ‘handpicked’ him about 48
hours to the close of nomination. Joe
Biden did not contest for the Vice
Presidency of the United States and there
is no matured democracy were people
contest for Vice Presidency.
On your question on if my party picks me
as a running mate; I will say that the
question is not viable at this point. For
now, I think the task for the APC, and it is
not a small task, is to find that presidential
candidate who will represent the change
that Nigerians are yearning for, and who
represents the symbol of the party. If I
have any contribution to make right now, it
is to contribute to the process that will
ensure that the candidate who will emerge
is someone who commands the affection
and support of Nigerians. Once we have
that, nothing else matters.



http://dailyindependentnig.com/2014/11/jonathan-no-reason-rig-2015-polls-oshiomhole/

thank-you Mr G and D

ugly mofon

Story for the gods

GEJ till 2015

This man, aregbe, tinubu, akpabio, aliyu has shown that not all ugliness that money can change to beauty.

That's ma nigga, always got the right word to say, though ye fuccking up presently

Correct Man, na them full APC

Mr. Go And Die is attempting to sound rhetorical. Story for the gods.

laykhorn:
This dude should be contesting for Presidency, he would be 50 times better than our Fisherman is Aso villa. It would be a hallmark of greater things If APC make him the running mate of Buhari

Common shut up or you Go and Die if you have nothing to say

Make adams a running mate to dumb buhari right? What stop us from having the best, making buhari running mate to oshiomole or fashola?

brownlord:



Common shut up or you Go and Die if you have nothing to say

Make adams a running mate to dumb buhari right? What stop us from having the best, making buhari running mate to oshiomole or fashola?

Hwichever way, I want both in Aso

When you see knowledge, intelligence and wisdom, it's not hard to tell. Thumbs up Oshio Baba.

Osho baba have said it all, from deputy to governor, governor to vice, vice to completion of one's tenure, completion of one's tenure to elected president. Then what have u achieved at local, state and national levels? Except looting. Na dem sabi.

story for amadioha/sango....next...

This is someone who should rule this country but PDP through their zoning rubbish has brought religion and regional sentiment into the country.

It is a shame that people like Adams won't contest in 2015 and even if he does, many won't vote him.

9jii:
Correct Man, na them full APC

I dey tell you o

There is nothing in that interview that Oshiomhole said that i did not believe.He is also eloquent.I do not think PDP should have anything to do in edo state again after destroying the state for almost 10years.Anenih used Igbinedion and oghiadome to molest the state.

Now that is who I call a man of integrity. Unlike the bufoon currently desecrating the number one office.

APC seems to have the better stock.

Well said Oshiomhole. Posterity will judge you kindly. Keep staying on the right side. Your position is secured in the good book of Nigeria.

Jonasatan will rot in the hottest part of hell!

arsetalks:
This is someone who should rule this country but PDP through their zoning rubbish has brought religion and regional sentiment into the country.

It is a shame that people like Adams won't contest in 2015 and even if he does, many won't vote him.

Why can't you're beloved APC present him since they represent change.. Or is the change slogan as useless as the p in "psycho"?

Oshimole its your turn to identify yourself as a candidate for VP, Fashola has kept quiet since he learnt that Muslim/Muslim ticket won't fly. After Osho baba, Kayode Fayemi will take over. Eediots in APC

Meaning you have reasons for rigging the last LG election in Edo State. Hypocrite

idumuose:
There is nothing in that interview that Oshiomhole said that i did not believe.He is also eloquent.I do not think PDP should have anything to do in edo state again after destroying the state for almost 10years.Anenih used Igbinedion and oghiadome to molest the state.

PDP didn't destroy Edo state, Igbinedion destroyed Edo, lets get that straight. Prof. Osumbor only ruled for a short time but he did more than Igbinedion did in his 8yrs as governor. Oshiomhole is undoubtedly an eloquent speaker and has always wowed his audience with rhetoric. Same Oshiomhole, painfully explaining the folly of rigging elections shamefully rigged our local govt elections to install his cronies. You would have seen the TV clips of unrest when he imposed his proxy in Esan. Don't get me wrong he did well in his first term, this new Oshiomhole is different from the NLC's Oshiomhole whom I voted for.

Your take that PDP will never win Edo state is very wrong. APC will win in Afemai but Esan is PDP so Benin is the battle ground. GEJ would win with a large margin and for governorship if PDP fields a notable Benin man it would be a walk over. We tend to vote personality rather than party in Edo state.

For information purposes only, it was Anenih that gave Oshiomhole the documents that proved PDP lost the election. Anenih was never comfortable with Osumbor an OBJ loyalist. Oshiomhole has Anenih to thank for making him governor.

GEJ wil not rig any election because he wil win without rigging. If APC lose election they wil say is rigging but if they win its free and fair.

OSHIOMHOLE U MUST BE AN ECONOMIST, LUK AT D WAY U BREAK IT DOWN EVEN A LAY MAN CAN UNDERSTAND IT. WHAT A PRESIDENTIAL MATERIAL U ARE. ANYWAY, A CANDID ADVICE FOR GEJ.

arsetalks:
This is someone who should rule this country but PDP through their zoning rubbish has brought religion and regional sentiment into the country.

It is a shame that people like Adams won't contest in 2015 and even if he does, many won't vote him.

its about time........don't push me bro
u won't like my next move....