Obaseki has nothing to offer Edo – Ize-Iyamu

Osagie Ize-Iyamu

In this interview with JOHN ALECHENU, the candidate of the Peoples Democracy Party for the Edo State governorship election, Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu, says the All Progressives Congress will lose on September 10

Are you not intimidated by the profile of Godwin Obaseki, the candidate of the APC?

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. 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 the chairman of a non-existent economic team. I have been Chief of Staff, Secretary to the State Government. The experience I have he cannot come near it. The economic team they talked about, have they ever told you who the members are? How many times did they meet? What were the policies they churned out? For a state like Edo, with the level of the 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’. Here is a man who has never voted in Edo. A man who prides himself as being a very strong businessman who wants to govern our state, have you asked him, ‘Sir, where are your business outfits in Edo?’ ‘How many people have you employed in Edo?’ You haven’t done all these things and you said you want to come and take the number one position in Edo. It shows the disdain you have for us.

The APC-led administration has been credited for constructing roads. Do you agree?

When you do one road, people will expect that another one is coming; but the roads were deliberately chosen to deceive. He deliberately chose roads that a casual visitor would want to pass through without going deep into the city. So, if you land at Benin airport and you drive to the Government House, and then you drive back to the airport, you might have a very good impression about Benin on the state of roads; but if you take the pains to go outside the city, you will find out that the roads that have been done are less than three per cent. It will shock you to know that the road to the palace is in a deplorable condition. If not for the rains, I have contacted a construction company to go and fix it because it is a disgrace. We are planning the coronation of the new king. Visitors are coming into the state and the road to the palace is impassable. If the road leading to the king’s palace is bad, you can imagine other roads. The greatest achievement of Oshiomhole in his first term was the cosmetic renovation of schools.

What is the basis for the confidence that your party could win this election?

Our confidence is the fact that Oshiomhole has failed woefully and you can see that every campaign he has gone to, rather than show Edo people his scorecard, he has resorted to name-calling, insulting Ize-Iyamu, insulting Chief Tony Anenih and everybody in the PDP; but the truth about it is that the PDP is no longer in government. So, to continue to talk about when the PDP was in government many years ago is laughable. The reason why you were elected is to correct what you felt was wrong with the PDP administration and you have eight years to effect that correction. I can understand if you are complaining a year or two years after; but eight years after, you are still blaming the PDP, then it means you are not the right person for the job. If you take your mind back to the 2015 presidential election, the APC was demystified in Edo which resulted in the PDP having two out of the three senators representing the state. We have five out of the nine members of the House of Representatives. Many people do not know that of the 17 local government councils that were announced in that election, the PDP won in 15 while the APC managed to win in only two. That result tells a story. I believe that in the forthcoming governorship election, if the election is free and fair, I think the PDP would do better than what they did during the presidential election.

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