Governor Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State says people of the state will not
allow the PDP loot and deplete the state’s treasury the way they depleted
the nation’s treasury, calling on people of the state to reject the PDP
and its candidate in the governorship election holding on September 10.
Speaking at a rally of the All Progressives Congress (APC) holding at
Afuze, Owan East Local Government Area, on Saturday, Oshiomhole said the
nation is presently in an economic recession because the past PDP
government looted the treasury dry.
He said: “The people who bled the treasury are now coming to tell you, the
victims, that rice is now expensive, naira has suffered devaluation. If
one man took over N2 billion, in Edo alone, what they have confessed to
EFCC to have taken is over N5 billion.
“If they took so much dollars meant for defense to protect Christians
against attacks from Boko Haram, to protect mosques from Boko Haram
attack, these people took the money in dollars, converted it to naira,
depleted our dollar reserves, shared it into their pockets, their generals
dug soak-away pits and put dollars inside. The whole dollars from the
Central Bank was taken and from a reserve of over $50 billion, PDP bled
the reserves and today it is down to about $20 billion.
“When a man comes to your house, burgled your store where you kept your
food and in the morning you find the store burgled, can you immediately
feed your children? What President Buhari is doing now, when he found that
PDP broke into the treasury and emptied it, he has started rebuilding of
the door of the treasury to resecure it, and the ones they have taken he
is recovering them one after the other.
“The way PDP put fire on our economy, to rebuild it cannot be overnight.
Today, my confidence about the future of our country is that Buhari is
blocking all the leakages in our economy.”
On the candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Mr Godwin Obaseki,
Oshiomhole said: “we have shown that Edo is viable, Godwin’s task is to
focus on how to get jobs for the youths, because when we built roads we
wanted to attract investors, when we built schools, we wanted to develop
the human capital and when you develop the human capital the next task is
for him to create the environment for those who have gone to schools to be
qualified for work. You can see that this is not something that came out
of the blues.
“It is the product of the 20-year development plan for the state which he
chaired as Chairman up to the year 2020. nation’s don’t grow on the basis
of the rule of the thumb, everything in the life of a nation is the
vision, the clarity of purpose of the leadership. “When the leadership
cannot see beyond the nose, he cannot do what he cannot imagine. We are
clear of the past, we are clear of our destination, we have identified the
route, Godwin will take us to the next level.”
On his part, Mr Godwin Obaseki, the gubernatorial candidate of the All
Progressives Congress said the Comrade has done well in the past seven and
half years but that more needs to be done. He said: “we have focussed on
education, focussed on infrastructure, focussed on health and water, yes,
we will continue to do so. But will now make sure that we focus on human
development. We want to focus on job creation, and we will create 200,000
jobs for our people.
“We will not only create jobs from agriculture, we will also from mining,
We are attracting a lot of mining companies into Owan East. They are over
25 mining licenses in Owan East, we are talking with the Minister for
Solid Minerals to ensure we get investors to this place. So by the grace
of God, in another one year, you will see a lot of investors coming to
Owan East and this way, they will bring employment and prosperity to Owan
East.”
A PDP Woman Leader in Owan East, Mrs Arukhe led over 90 members of themPDP
to defect to the APC at the rally.