The Edo State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has alleged that the public sector in the state has broken down.
Gatekeepers News reports that State chairman of the APC, Col David Imuse (rtd) said this while addressing a press conference at the party secretariat in Benin City.
He said Governor Godwin Obaseki was celebrating phantom projects while his counterparts across the country were commissioning development projects just as he alleged that he had sunk the state into an incurable debt profile.
Imuse said, “Edo state has been left to drift. The educational system, for example, is in a coma while the health services sector has collapsed. Infrastructures are at various levels of fermentation while insecurity has become the order of the day.
“Pensioners are being deprived of their legitimate earnings while local governments administration have been rendered useless and dysfunctional by his decision not to conduct elections of chairmen and councilors.
“It is the same government that has plunged Edo into debts and is now planning to take additional loans.
“Without a state legislature, Mr. Obaseki has since he assumed office for a second term increased the domestic debt of the state by an additional N50 billion, from N81, 750,262,718.83 in 2021. This is exclusive of State’s foreign debt of over $280million from available records.
“In December 2020, he sponsored a N25 billion Fixed Rate Senior Guaranteed Series 1 Bond Issuance and guaranteed by an Irrevocable Standing Payment Order (ISPO) on Edo State’s revenue issued by the State Ministry of Finance.
“In November last year, he again took an N18.7 billion loan from the Central Bank of Nigeria. Now Mr. Obaseki wants to take a new N7 Billion loan to finance its scam of a Light up Edo project, which in Benin City has seen the repainting of a few street light poles.
“Unfortunately, these loan transactions are done covertly and for nebulous projects whose scopes, utilities, locations and contractors are largely vague.”
He added that the APC was prepared with all structures in place from the state, local governments, wards and units to win back the state.
