By Simon Ebegbulem, Benin-City
Last Sunday, we published an interview with the PDP governorshiop candidate, Charles Airhiavbere. Today, we bring you Governor Adams Oshiomhole, the candidate of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), who speaks on his chances in this week's election. Excerpts:
What promises did you make to the people of Edo State and have you been able to keep faith?
I think my promise to the people of Edo State is two fold. First, the politics of the state because I believe that unless you get the politics right, sustainable development is impossible. And Edo politics had been privatized by some god fathers and the result was that since 1999, only those anointed by these god fathers could aspire to political office.
The 1999 election, 2003 and even up 2007, they had the machinery to rig every body out. I came in to challenge that order and to promise Edo people that the god fathers were not indeed invincible. Even the god father-general did remain strong until challenged by the forces of progress. Today, that issue is settled so much so that we have had series of election since I came in, we had about four by-elections. And those the god father-general fielded lost. All those we supported won.
In the last general elections, for the first time, the PDP rigging machine in Edo was completely demobilized and a collaborator in INEC was prosecuted and dismissed. For the first time, that sense of impunity that you can do it and nothing will happen, some thing is beginning to happen. So the last result has settled the question whether the votes will ever count in Edo State.
All those the god father supported in Edo South, which accounts for 65 per cent of the votes, they lost. Edo North has about 33 per cent, all those who contested on the platform of the godfather, they lost. In Edo Central, which accounts for about 15 per cent of the votes, ACN won about 45 per cent of the over all votes and we won in one or two of the local government areas.
This has settled the question that in Edo, the people, not the god father, now decide who becomes what. Edo State electorate has acquired such sophistication that in the presidential election every body agreed that Jonathan deserved the votes and he got the votes after the National Assembly elections in which we won two of the three senatorial seats. And these two are very important representing 65 per cent of the electorate, the other one representing about 33 per cent.
And subsequent election for the House of Assembly, we asked the electoral umpire in a simple advertorial that now it is time to return to the party and we won 19 of the twenty seats; in fact it was twenty but the result in one of the local governments was manipulated by a DPO who used to be an orderly to a god father. So I think now the politics of Edo has been liberalized, Edo electorate has regained the confidence that their votes can count and the votes counted in the last election. Now what is the benefit of this?
Having got the people to elect us, not the god fathers, we are now accountable only to the people; so the resources are now channeled into massive and aggressive urban renewal in Benin-City, aggressively finding the solution to flooding and erosion, building rural roads across the 18 local government areas, connecting communities that had given up that they will never have access to the cities.
For the first time, we have walk ways, street lights, all of those things which you never found any where in Benin City before. We have not only solved all the problems for sure, but we have also made a very bold statement that Edo is viable and, for the first time, the state is working. And the people are unanimous that Edo is working again.
Why I need second term
Edo can be described as work in progress. If you look at the quality of schools that we have built, enrolment has returned in public schools by more than 50 per cent. But that does not mean that we have built all the roads we want to build. Our urban renewal project is not yet completed.
The erosion and flood control under the Benin-City water storm master plan, we have started a N30billion project. We need to revitalize the industries. So much has been done but so much more is yet to be done. We have made a lot of progress and we don't want to abandon the progress that is on.
Tension
The desperation is coming from one side. It is coming from the god fathers because they are insisting that they have a right to unrestrained access to the common wealth of Edo people. And because they misled themselves into thinking that the resources of the state are there, they won't give up the fight. But the good news is that they do not have the political muscle and political muscle is a function of your connection with the electorate, they don't have that because, for ten years, they took the electorate for granted.
Violence
First, President Goodluck Jonathan was here on Saturday, 30 June and, at least, made a profound statement that, yes, as the leader of the PDP, he had come to campaign for his party but, as the President of Nigeria, he warned them that, this time around, there will be no rigging. No stuffing of ballot boxes, no thuggery, that he had instructed the IG of police and the Chief of Defense Staff to provide adequate security and he had been assured they will deliver.
(http://vml1.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Governor-Oshiomhole.jpg?9d7bd4) (http://www.vanguardngr.com/2012/05/edo-2012-guber-our-people-will-resist-rigging-oshiomhole/governor-oshiomhole/)Governor Oshiomhole I don't think we need more assurances. What we now need to do is to assist the President to give effect to this profound commitment he has made to the people of Edo. Also, significantly, the President was fair enough in reminding his party men that it was in Edo that we launched one man one vote and that he participated in that declaration and therefore the state election offers him the first test as President to demonstrate that he means this as regards transforming the ways elections are held in Nigeria.
I want to say I believe he was honest about it and July 14 will confirm the commitment of the President to those very profound statements that he made. But let us also ask the question, who do you think the President was talking to? As governor of Edo, who rigged me out of the governorship in 2007?
Who did the court find guilty of stuffing ballot boxes? Who was found guilty by the court of hawking thumb printed ballot papers? Who was found to have cheated? It was the PDP. So I feel, that the President demonstrated uncommon courage in telling his own party men that that method will no longer be accepted. And he told them that if they mobilize, they can win. Look at the condition, ' if you mobilize, you can win', not that you can rig.
So, to me, this is sufficiently reassuring. And once it is clear that thuggery will not be permitted, violence will disappear because the reason for violence in an election is that to be able to dispossess the electoral officers of ballot boxes and papers, you need a level of thuggery. For thugs to instill fear in the electorate, they must resort to violence so that they can scare people away. So I believe that the President has a clear understanding that the way out of violence is to uphold and defend the right of one man, one vote.
One man, one vote
If we conduct the election on July 14, on the basis of one man one vote, with INEC not colluding to cause confusion by delaying supply of voting materials, manipulating the process, we will get not less than 90 per cent of the votes across the three senatorial districts. Why? Because, for the first time, the people of the state have seen how governance has affected them.
Our children have seen the difference in their schools, modern roof, good desk, qualitatively learning environment. What makes this election so simple for me to talk about victory is that, as some one told me, like a man has been married for thirteen years, the first ten years he was married to a woman, he gave every thing to this woman and behaved like a true man and yet for the ten years there was no child.
He then decides to divorce and, after a prolonged legal battle, he succeeded in divorcing the woman and married a new one. This one he divorced, you can call her the PDP, then the new one called ACN. Under three and a half years, he can see progress. At the beginning, they said it was only in Benin City that I was working but now they can see it across the state. They see erosion control challenge being decisively tackled. They see the mass transit where children in uniform enjoy automatic 50 per cent discount.
It is so easy for the average voter to say in ten years of the PDP what is it that they did that I can point out? In three and a half years of ACN we can see good schools, we can see roads, we can see water, particularly in areas like Edo Central where the PDP had said it will be impossible for them to get water. We have water in Ekpoma, we have water in Igueben, we have water in Iruekpen, we have water in Ubiaja, we have water in Ugua, we have water in Ugboha and other places.
We have built new health centers, a lot of things. And the PDP saw workers as cursed agents and, because they saw workers that way, they retrenched over six thousand in 2000 without paying them any benefit. They sacked teachers even as we don't have enough teachers in our schools.
Pensioners have to go into demonstrations before they got their monthly stipends. Even in the social sectors, things were so bad. Our hospitals were leaking, even the Central Hospital, our prime hospital. And they ran down all the industries, Okpilla Cement, Bendel Breweries, these were outstanding businesses employing thousands of our people but all these were grounded by the PDP under ten years.
So people can easily recollect what their experience was and what they can see today. So all I need to do is to remind them where we are coming from and show them where we are and ask them to answer the question, do you want to return to the other way where your children will be sitting on the floor?
Do you want to go back when children will be washed off in their bedrooms due to flooding? And they can recollect easily how those coming to Benin City or going outside Benin will rather avoid Benin and go through bypass because they could not pass through Tomline, the Traditional Ground or Adolor area because if it rained for five minutes, you will be washed off the road.
'Ogbemudia confession'
In fact, Dr Ogbemudia, who is one leader respected across Edo North,Edo South and Central, on account of his stewardship for about nine years under Gen.Yakubu Gowon, confessed to the fact that his own part of the city where he lives, Iheya Street, he was thinking that towards the end of his tenure, he will build the area but unfortunately he could not do that before he was over thrown.
He has been a leader of the PDP since 1999, yet even the government he put in place and he supported, for ten years, they did nothing in his area. I visited him once and he said he was being asked to relocate but that, at old age, he does not see why he should relocate from that area. Now we have built not just that road, all the network of roads along that area, about 13 of them.
Today that area is more beautiful than any part of the GRA. So he said there is no way he is going to tell those people living there not to vote for Oshiomhole. Just go and listen to the opinion of market women, Okada riders, traditional rulers, they all said they have not seen a thing like this. Again quoting the Oba of Benin in a statement read on his behalf by Edun Akenzua during a meeting of Edo People Abroad, in Atlanta, he said and I quote:
"One of the things the Comrade Governor has achieved is that he has opened the eyes of Edo people that never again will a future government come to tell them that Edo is not viable, it is not a major oil producing state, that it is a civil service state and therefore nothing can be done. Comrade has shown that every thing can be done. "
So what more do you want to hear? You can now see why those who used to be celebrated as national leaders, people who now can no longer fix, that they now agree that the Edo situation is now beyond them to fix. That they now have to persuade the President, the Vice President to come here repeatedly, they now needed a 48-man team where he is only a member, the man who used to be the leader was only a member of the team to fight to reclaim Edo State, quoting them.
Ethnic politics
I am not worried because it is a familiar thing in Nigeria that those who have no ideas try to substitute that deficit by appealing to primordial sentiment. But when the choice is between a man well known on account of his pedigree, now, additionally, on account of my performance, how does where you come from become an issue? Out standing Benin people have said that I am even the Benin candidate.
Now we have two Benins in the race, Mr Edebiri, the ANPP candidate, and Airhiavbere of the PDP, because, I don't want to confuse the matter, because what ever you want to say, Mr Edebiri has shown that he is a different human being, he understands that the issue is about development. So I want to be specific. The PDP candidate Airhiavbere who is promoting advertorial that says the Benin people should vote for one of their own and that they should remember that what ever a stranger does, a stranger will remain a stranger and any time he is going he will go away with the things he built.
These are adverts which the PDP put out. Now school children now asked him, if Oshiomhole is a stranger, where is he going to? But that even if he is a stranger and he wants to go away, will he carry the Idia College building, will he take away Maria Gorreti College, will he carry Akpakpva Road, Airport Road, Oba Market Road, will he carry away Siluko Road, will he carry the Central Hospital that he is building? In any case, who is the stranger? Edo people are very rich in history, culture and tradition and you do not need to be a professor of history to know that, unlike several other states, Edo is not an artificial amalgam that was put together for political convenience.
The word Edo is an ethnic category, every Edo man comes from Benin and, if you listen to the language, you will understand that they are basically the same. They are putting an advert where they doctored my comment to give the impression that we are in an abnormal situation, the governor is Edo North, SSG Edo North, Head of Service Edo North, Speaker Edo North and then they said Benin people should see what Comrade has said.
'Lamentations of imperfections'
But like I have always said, my task as governor was not to lament the imperfections in our environment. That advertorial was the situation PDP created which I inherited but now corrected. PDP appointed the Head of Service in question, PDP appointed the Speaker in question. What has the Comrade done about it? The Comrade has replaced that Edo North Head of Service with an Edo South Head of Service, not on account of just ethnic balancing but because the woman merits the position on account of her exposure and demonstrated level of competence.
It is not a secret that the PDP took me to court for allegedly removing the Speaker. A Speaker from my own local government. Who succeeded the Speaker today, the new Speaker is from Edo South. So I am happy to say that one of the things I keep preaching is to say that while the PDP wants to break those bridges of unity, we will continue to build those bridges because Edo is one, and we will build it both in words and action.
Vanguard Nigeria
The Forces of truth remains a formidable force that even the forces of corruption,Godfathers and Political rigging can't oppose..Here is a Man who has strived so hard to get a very good reputation..abi dem tell una say e nor see money carry??I love PDP but not to the detriment of the truth??Edo oni baje o