MadeInTokyo:



-The confidence with which he spoke that night before a handful of journalists drawn from across the country betrayed the underlying fact that he is the candidate of an opposition party that had been considered dead and buried in Edo State.


-Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu, the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP in the forthcoming Edo State governorship election was almost entirely dismissive of his challenger on the ballot box, as he rather, sharpened his arrows at the incumbent governor, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole.


-It is a matter of irony. Ize-Iyamu was Comrade Oshiomhole’s campaign manager four years ago, and nine years earlier, was his proxy manager and strategist.

However, with time and themes changed, Ize-Iyamu that night built his confidence on what he alleged as the failure of the All Progressives Congress, APC government of which his main challenger, Godwin Obaseki is an intrinsic part of. “Today, people are very disillusioned and very dissatisfied. Just some days ago, our pensioners went on protest to Government House. Even though the governor was in his office, he refused to see them. He refused to grant them access, but it is interesting to hear what he said.

“Judicial service workers have not been paid their entitlements for over a year now. They went on a strike, asking that government should obey the court ruling which says they should enjoy financial autonomy. Even when they called off their strike, the governor declared that their entitlements should not be paid for the period they were on strike, and it runs into months. The judicial workers as at today are complaining. Students who voted for him believing that he would make education more accessible, have seen how he has reduced the standard of education, he has increased school fees. So, on what basis are students going to vote for him? “Okada riders who were at the forefront of the agitation to get him re-elected into government, the moment he came in, he banned them; but worse was the fact that he did not plan for them. There was no attempt to create an alternative for them. The only people he employed throughout his tenure were those youths he took under Edo Youth Empowerment Scheme. The moment the second term election was in the kitty, he sacked them; over 7,000 youths.

” Ize-Iyamu’s postulation is that disenchantment across the land would sink the candidate of the APC who is campaigning on the works of the outgoing governor. But given claims by officials of the outgoing administration that the preceding PDP administration of which Ize-Iyamu was a strategic player was the cause of the problems, the PDP candidate fires back: “Rather than show Edo people his scorecard, he has resorted to name-calling; insulting Ize- Iyamu, insulting Chief Tony Anenih and everybody in PDP; but the truth about it is that PDP is no longer in government. So, to continue to talk about the PDP when they were in government many years ago is laughable.

The reason you were elected was to correct what you felt was wrong with the PDP administration, and you have eight years to effect that correction. If after eight years, you are still complaining, it means that you have no clue. I can understand you are complaining a year or two years after; but eight years after you are still blaming PDP, then it means that you are not the right person for the job.” Indeed, in his perspective, the Edo people have forgotten the perceived failures of the last PDP administration and have rather focused attention on the perceived failures of the APC administration. He gave as his yardstick, the feat of the PDP in the last presidential election. “If you take your mind back to the 2015 presidential election, APC was demystified in Edo which has resulted in PDP having two out of three senators. We have five out nine members of House of Representatives. Many people do not know that of the 17 local governments that were announced in that election; PDP won 15 while APC managed to win only two. That result tells a story.” Given his strategic role in canvassing for Oshiomhole’s governorship quests in 2007 and 2012, it looked like a tricky question asking Pastor Ize-Iyamu if there was nothing that the outgoing governor could be credited for in the last eight years? “There are two areas that I felt that he has tried. One was the internally generated revenue (IGR) which is key to the sustainability of any state. When he came in it was about N300 million, and he announced that it had gone up to N2.5 bn. That to me was something to applaud. However, that money has nosedived, and the reason is not far-fetched. The government has not been able to put in place any machinery for attracting businesses or to sustain existing ones.

The tax policy is arbitrary and punitive. “So, Edo people are over-taxed, and a lot of the money is going into private pockets. Lots of revenue collectors have resorted to self-help. Money that ought to go into government coffers is going into private pockets. Sometimes ago, a member of the Produce Board resigned his appointment, saying that a member of that board was collecting all the money meant for the state and putting it into his private accounts. “So, I find it very difficult now to praise him on the IGR because of the fraud going on. At the same time, regarding percentage, he has not even done any miracle. When we were in government in 1999, the IGR of the state was N26m; the maximum was N30m. Before we left, we moved it to N300m. So, what they have done in terms of percentage is not even extraordinary when compared to what we did; but the reality is that the money has nosedived. What makes it even worse is that they collected $75m in one tranche, and they collected the second one for the purpose of growing our IGR.

They borrowed money from the World Bank to increase the IGR. After collecting the money, the IGR has gone down. So, something is wrong somewhere. They are going to make us pay for the money they collected in growing the IGR, yet the IGR is not growing. Instead it is going down. “The second area that I felt he should be praised was the attempt to deal with the flooding problem in Benin. So, when he took N30b, nobody complained; but at the tail-end of his administration, he announced to Edo people through his Commissioner for Environment that the job cannot be completed in 30 years. Of course, he does not have a tenure of 30 years. He did not disclose the percentage of work the N30b can do; he only said the project cannot be completed in 30 years. Instead, he will be doing it in phases. What this means is that after collecting N30b, he was telling us that he won’t be able to do what he has promised us.


Given all his focus on the outgoing governor, one was tempted to ask if he was intimidated by the credentials of his main rival, Mr. Obaseki? “How can you be intimidated by a man you don’t see? Every time the APC campaigns, the only man who is speaking is Adams Oshiomhole while the governorship candidate, Obaseki is pushed to the background. So, if the APC candidate is content with hiding under him, no problem. But when you say rich background, I am surprised. What rich background? Are you talking about his financial or academic background?

With due respect, even if one wants to be modest, when you want to talk about governance, the best Obaseki can lay claim to is that he was chairman of a non-existent Economic team. I have been Chief of Staff, Secretary to Government. The experience I have he (Obaseki ) cannot come near it. The Economic team they talked about, have they ever told you who are the members? How many times did they meet? What were the policies they churned out? For a state like Edo, with the level of economic mess that the state is in, it is shocking that somebody can stand up and say ‘I was in charge of the Economic team.’ He said he is a technocrat. Technocrat in what sense?

Read more at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2016/08/how-we-have-demystified-the-apc-in-edo-ize-iyamu/

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