Governor Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State says the Peoples Democratic Party has begun a campaign of lies to deceive the people and further impoverish them since they have no record of performance to present to the people.
Speaking yesterday at the commissioning of the Auchi-Jattu-Afashio-Ikabigbo road, the Governor said “in the next couple of weeks, in fact the season is already here, politicians are already into marketing. Politicians are making deliberate efforts to remove the issues of development from political discourse. They prefer to discourse issue of ethnicity where you come from, where I come from. They prefer to buffet us with issues of religion, primordial sentiments and all kinds of ridiculous issues. But what you the electorate must insist on is that sixteen years after democracy, the learning curve is over.
He said “If you were doing apprentice and you have not gotten your freedom after sixteen years, your case is hopeless. If you were pursuing a university degree and after sixteen years, you could not obtain a degree you would be advised to withdraw. Sixteen years of democracy, we cannot continue to do trial and error governance.
“We must now approach governance on the basis of skills, competence and courage. We must have clarity of industrial policies that are not contradictory, policies designed to reduce and bring Nigeria back to work and give work to our young people. We must move away from the tradition where we engage in fraud in the name of Sure P and give to individuals to share so that we might use them as thugs.
Oshiomhole argued that “we must move away from empowering individuals to building institutions. When politicians come to ask you to vote for them like I was reading today where somebody said he was going to provide bursary to our students we must ask them when you were here for ten years, how many people did you give bursary to. Did you have primary schools in Auchi with red roofs?
“In the next few weeks, we will be commissioning a number of schools in Auchi and I will be doing so with much arrogance. This is because whatever they say is not possible, we have shown that it is possible. The previous government created an environment that would lead to a dynasty of the poor. Where the poor man gives birth to another poor, where the labourer gives birth to the labourer, because they disconnected the ladder of upward mobility.
“How can there be upward mobility if in my village there was no school. How could I have become a governor as the son of a cassava woman? The only ladder of upward mobility is that we must have quality education even in the remotest part of our community. But even in the heart of Benin City they dumped our children in classrooms without roofs. We had potholes in our classrooms and we had primary one and two competing for space”, he noted.
“We had teachers that were not paid for five months, they told us that Edo case is hopeless as it was a civil service state, that we are a cursed people, that we had no reason to benefit from derivations. They asked us to give up hope that it is our fault. Six years ago this state was always reported in the negative.
“But today we have proved that it is not how much you earn that determines the quality of life of your family; it is how responsibly you manage the little resource that accrue to you. There is no country in the planet that has all that is required to meet the greed of leaders who are detained by primitive culture of accumulation. We cannot be a country that is the largest in the continent, manipulating statistics and yet our people are dying in hunger”, he said.
Speaking shortly after commissioning the road, the Sultan of Sokoto Saad Abubakar the 111 said whatever leaders want to do must be tied to the aspirations of the citizens.
The Sultan said “It is important for to organize people to continuously pray for the country, because prayer is the best weapon that we can deploy to face any problem confronting us. I did not know that the Governor is a road engineer, I thought he was a common labour leader in a textiles factory, but he went straight and told us how roads were constructed.
“This goes to show the passion a leader must have to get things done and done rightly. Leaders must learn on how to lead right. The purpose of any leader is to see to spiritual and temporal development of the people. Seeing to the development of the people is more important than the use of force.
“When I came in yesterday I asked the governor how long it took him to organize this event and he told me forty eight hours and now coming here this morning I can see the large crowd which shows the respect the people have for the governor. Keep on supporting such government at all levels”, he said.
He advised “When you support the governor at all levels ensure you tell them the truth. Don’t tell them what he wants to hear always. There is nothing they can do to you which God Almighty has not destined for you. When leaders are doing right you tell them when they are going off the road you bring them back”.
