Immediate past governor of Edo state, Comrade Adams
Oshiomhole in this interview with reacts to some criticisms against his views
on restructuring...
Excerpts: Oshiomhole Some Southern leaders have criticized
you over your stand on restructuring, what is your take on it, are you
retreating? I am also a leader from the South. I don’t know what people mean
but I am clear that we need devolution of powers and review of the Revenue
Allocation Formula. Those are the two things I believe are doable and they will
transfer more resources to the states and the states can do some of the things
that the Federal government is currently doing. If that is what they mean by
restructuring fine. But any suggestions about return to regions, I don’t
believe they should move from one region to state and from state back to regions.
I think what we need is very well captured by (President Olusegun) Obasanjo. We
need to restructure our attitude, we need to be more honest with our people, we
need to creatively manage public fund to take care of the larger public. That
for me is not a function of structure, it is a function of character, it is a
function of attitude. It is sad that sometimes people go personal when we
discuss these issues, but what will interest you is that people who are saying
we should implement the confab report, one of the confab reports said we should
create additional 18 states. Does that make sense to you? And those who are
saying these were also on record saying that most states are not viable, but
yet they want more states. These are the contradictions that I see. People talk
about true Federalism, whose truth? You can see the contradictions in Nigeria.
An Igbo governor retrenched Igbo workers who were not from his state. PDP
alleged that you abandoned the Auchi Fertilizer Company which was just
re-branded and commissioned by Vice President Yemi Osinbanjo because you didn’t
want to see any PDP legacy in the state? What has happened is with President
Buhari’s fertilizer Initiative which started in 2016. Special provision was
made to try and provide some cheap funds to support and build blending plants
and I believe State Government under Godwin Obaseki has taken full advantage of
that. But the truth is that I don’t like reacting to PDP’s allegations because
the dead and the living don’t communicate, God has used me to bury them in Edo
state and they will never overcome their pain. You don’t expect them to ever
say anything truthful. I read them saying that I did not want to operate the
factory because I did not want any legacy of PDP. But remember that governor Igbinedion
then did not hand over to me, he handed over to Prof.Osunbor who was then his
PDP member and Osunbor was there for 18 months. When the Igbinedion government
commissioned it, they did not run the factory, so it is not as if the factor
operated one day. In fact you recall that President Obasanjo who came then to
commission the place regretted what he saw and described it as the highest 419
in his presidency. He was misled to commission the place and when went inside
ge found out that everywhere was dusty. And before Obasanjo got back to his
chopper they had closed the gate and it never opened since then. So I think the
good news is that President Buhari has come to rebuild the country and he
rightly recognized that agriculture offers a huge potential not only in terms
of job creation but also in terms of food security. A nation cannot be secured
if you depend on imported food. And for the Okpella cement factor commissioned
by the Vice President, for me it is a dream come true. That Okpella cement was
operating before, even the wall in this my house was built by Okpella cement in
1990. It was a company that was working but unfortunately the previous PDP
government ran it aground, they sold it and leadership has change over time and
at the end they were just using it in bagging cement. But I encouraged BUA
people to get the factory open so they could commence real jobs and conserve
our foreign exchange. We followed through and it is now a reality.
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