As Oshiomhole begins 2nd tenure: Mixed reactions envelop 1st tenure performance

By Ken Edokpayi

 

Beginning from November 12, 2012, a fresh tenure of another four years, would commence for embattled Executive Governor of Edo State , Comrade Adams Aliyu Oshiomhole, to try to take adequate stock of his performance in the last four years, re-organize and re-project himself and his team for improved performance in the next four years.

            There is no doubt that the state’s political landscape, in the last four years, has been very eventful.  Outside the criticized performance of Governor Oshiomhole in the driver’s seat of the administration by the opposition parties and interests, there were two crucial elections, which heighten the political tempo in the state.  First was the general elections featuring the States,’ National Assembly, and Presidential Elections; and secondly, in the twilight of the four-year tenure, precisely on July 14, 2012, the enormously hyped gubernatorial election took place, the outcome of which is still generating huge columns of legal dust.

            How do the people of Edo State feel about the performance of the governor, and what are the views of critical opposition interests in the state on their assessments of the performance of the governor?  The Navigator went to town to speak to a cross section of Edo people.  Excerpts:

            “There is no doubt,” opened up Barrister Oamen Edetanle, “that after an almost lifeless 8-year tenure of the Lucky Igbinedion administration in the state, a greater majority of Edo people yearned for someone else to bring more enduring creativity into their quest for egalitarian life.  Then, out of the blues, came in Comrade Adams Oshiomhole of the Action Congress of Nigeria. 

“Yes, the way the people felt those Igbinedion days, they would have voted for anyone at all.  But the emergence of Oshiomhole has brought a ray of hope that government could intervene on the side of the people and transform the state of our infrastructures.  This, he has done in the last four years.”

            Barrister Edetanle, who spoke with The Navigator in Ekpoma, the administrative headquarters of Esan West local government area, maintained that “ Edo people are, no doubt, grateful for his contributions so far.  Though, there is still a whole lot left undone, as a person, I strongly believe he would use these coming four years to do more for the people and further etch his names in the consciousness of the people.  I do not hesitate to wish him well.”

            However, Elder Solomon Edosomwan, a Benin-based public affairs analyst, while referring to Oshiomhole’s first tenure as “a fluke,” observed that the governor, “who willy-nilly floated with Lucky Igbinedion in all his frivolous escapades that siphoned a great deal of the state’s resources,” has so far capitalized on “the people’s naivety in, not only appreciating him, but wrongly showering unrestricted encomiums on him for the miserable little he has done with the so much that he has received.”

            While noting that “quite a lot has been done in transforming public schools’ infrastructures in the state,” Elder Edosomwan stressed that “funds used in the upgrading of school infrastructures are from a special counterpart financial source, which is different from the monthly financial allocation to the state.  What is he doing with what accrues to the state and all other such proceeds from the dehumanizing tax regime, which the helmsman at the State Board of Internal Revenue, say contributes over two billion Naira to state coffers monthly?

            “How do you measure performance? Is it by constructing a 7km Airport Road , Benin City for the third year running without any headway, at a whopping sum of over N11billion?  Over eighty percent of the roads in Benin City , the state capital, which the governor says he has transformed, are not motorable. Residents have been passing through hell on these roads these past four years. 

“The huge sum the governor has so far expended on Airport Road , especially after changing contractors, could have conveniently rehabilitation all the roads and adjoining streets in the whole of the GRA Benin.  That is the road, whose contract he says would terminate at the Ogba River .  As we speak, three years after, the road is still being rehabilitated.  Funny enough, they have started planting flowers on the road from the Ring Road end of it; whereas rehabilitation work has not reached Oko Central Road junction! 

“Yet, he keeps poke-nosing into federal government projects all in the game to share credit, even with World Bank-assisted projects.  He is doing walk-ways on Dawson – Uselu – Ugbowo – Lagos road, which the federal government is reconstructing. But when that long stretch of road was worse off, he mandated the erection of signposts indicating the road was a federal government responsibility.  Gov. Oshiomhole plays politics with his projects; that is what I find revolting.  He does projects for people to clap for him.  That is why over 95% of the few projects he has executed are where people can see and clap.

            “He spent the last four years using almost a hundred million Naira to plant flowers at the Ring Road, when people in Ugbihoko, Evbuotubu, Upper Sokpoba, Useh, Irhirhi and adjoining suburbs, are so neglected that they now feel they are not part of Edo State .  He spent over N300million citing a Water Fountain at the Ring Road, when pipe-borne water is unavailable in the whole of the state! Taps have run dry in Benin City .  A stone’s throw from the Water Fountain is Sokponba Road .  Residents wake up to see the Water Fountain, and yet trek distances in search of boreholes to fetch water from!  Is this not hypocrisy of the first order?”

            He chastised the state governor for “deceiving Edo people saying that he had procured a Dando-drilling machine to sink boreholes in all of Edo Central senatorial district.  Go to Edo Central today to see the plight of the people in search of water.  Have you forgotten that seven students of the state-owned Ambrose Alli University , Ekpoma, fell into an old, dilapidated well, while searching for water to use?  We know that two of those students eventually died.  Is that what you call performance? 

“What I see is a whole lot of deceit.  His performance in the last four years has been a fluke.  The people clapping for him and praising him to high heavens are like the proverbial village people who when they come to a city the first time would exclaim ‘Oyinbo no good o!’ He is a propagandist, who is spitefully giving out bits and pieces to long, over-starved people and saying, ‘afterall, they did not get this much when Lucky Igbinedion was governor,’ while he is amassing wealth for himself and building a N10.8billion mansion in his native Iyamoh village.  Can he compare his performance, in all honesty, with what Gov. Fasola is doing in Lagos , or what Gov. Amaechi or Gov. Akpabio, are doing in Rivers and Akwa-Ibom respectively?”

The public affair analyst took the governor to task over the closure of Edo Line Transport Company and the other moribund state industries and companies, which he has failed to revive.  Said he, “people are condemning Lucky Igbinedion today; but to me, in certain regards, I would say the young man tried to create an impact, especially in the development of state industries.  But in four years of nonchalance and negligence, Oshiomhole has further driven the coffins of these industries deeper into the graves, instead of finding a way to resurrect them to provide more humane job opportunities for our teeming youths.  In four years, Edo has seen greater misery in the industrial sector.  This is terribly unacceptable.”

Elder Edosomwan challenged Gov. Oshiomhole to forget about expecting praises for his first tenure efforts, enjoining him “to conscientiously utilize the second mandate, which the majority of Edo people have given him to really work for the people.  He should forget about propaganda; he is not in competition with anyone, not with the PDP or any other party.  He should simply utilize the resources of the state for the people, and posterity will not forget him.  That is when he would have truly made a name for himself in the consciousness of the people; not all these razzmatazz about praise-catching dispensation of peanut projects, window-dressing and flower-planting that we have seen in the last four years.”

In his own contributions, Chairman, Congress for Progressive Change, CPC, Edo State, Comrade Godwin Erhahon, called on Gov. Oshiomhole to consolidate on his first tenure achievements, enjoining him to take his commendable infrastructural development programmes into the rural communities so that people in the grassroots would benefit from the democratic dividends.

            The CPC State Chairman challenged the state governor to sustain his development programme and the discipline he had inculcated into public service in the state, so that in the next four year, Edo State would have a better story of him to tell.

            Comrade Erhahon particularly noted the contributions of the Edo State Oil Producing Areas Development Commission, ESOPADEC, in the development of oil producing areas and sued for its sustenance, even as he enjoined the governor to constitute a new cabinet of persons with integrity, vision and intellect to join him in moving the state forward.

  TheNavigator