PDP candidate, Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu, yesterday said he has been vindicated on his claim about the high debt profile of the state by the Debt Management Office, DMO. In that respect, the candidate has tasked the outgoing governor to explain the N1.9 trillion allegedly received in the last 8 years.



A statement by the Ize-Iyamu Campaign Organisation also stated that the debt management office’s (DMO) release as reported by many national dailies, had settled Governor Oshiomhole’s claims that he never took foreign loans.

He said, ‘’the debt management office, Abuja has just stated that Edo State, with a total of $179.52 million as at June 30 this year, holds 4.91 per cent of the nation’s subnational foreign debts. And we know this is outside over N800 billion debt that Oshiomhole has created for Edo State”,

Reacting to recent media reports credited to Oshiomhole that he would not hand over to the PDP’s candidate, the campaign organisation said that the good people of Edo State would compel the governor to hand over to Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu.

The PDP’s candidate said that the project on who becomes the next governor of the state was no longer that of Ize Iyamu, saying the good people of the state who are desirous to change the ‘change’ that had brought misery, suffering, hike in fuel, food prices, obnoxious taxes and levies, and worst of all, deceitfulness, had taken over the political battle to rescue their state.

The PDP candidate said the governor and Obaseki who he said is the Head of the Economic Team, should be ashamed for squandering the state’s huge funds, which has now resulted in the state’s inability to pay local government workers’ salaries for 15 to 18 months and respond to other socio-economic crisis enveloping the state today.

He insisted that a vote for the APC would amount to an endorsement of unending suffering, bleeding of state’s treasury and high level of poverty that Governor Adams Oshiomhole-led government had created in almost eight years.

‘’It is a shame that Governor Adams Oshiomhole and his puppet candidate, Godwin Obaseki still talk about corruption accusing innocent people of corruption, when their government stinks of corruption.”

With an external debt of $41.19m in 2010, Edo State was not among the most indebted in the country. However, by the end of December 2015, the state’s external debt profile had leapt to $168.19m, showing a difference of $127m. This means that the state’s external debt rose by 308.34 per cent within the five-year period.

‘’It is a shame that Governor Adams Oshiomhole and his puppet candidate, Godwin Obaseki still talk about corruption accusing innocent people of corruption, when their government stinks of corruption.”