Rising from the ashes and dusts of a woeful defeat suffered in the last April 11, 2015 Edo Assembly polls, embattled chairman of the Edo State Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Mr. Dan Orbih appears to be mistaking the Edo State Comrade Governor, Adams Oshiomhole for the arrowhead of change agents in his party, Barrister Johnson Abolagba.
Abolagba and some leading Voices within the PDP have been up in arms against the leadership of Dan Orbih for misleading the party for six harrowing years. The disillusioned leaders of PDP, mainly from same Senatorial zone with Dan Orbih, Edo North, under the aegis of PDP Adherents (Edo North Must Win), have consistently called for the dissolution of the State and local government executives of the party in Edo State.
The group members are no push over and Dan Orbih is under rating them. In a letter addressed to the National leadership of the PDP, the group is calling for the immediate sack of Chief Dan Orbih-led state executive of the party and other executives in all the 18 local government areas of the state. The letter, according to news reports, which was signed by Abolagba, S. S. Mayaki and 18 other leaders across the six local government of Edo North, and was read to journalists at a well attended rally in Auchi, called for the constitution of caretaker committees at all levels to temporarily run the affairs of the party and organize congresses that will be totally free and fair.
One expects that this is an issue which Dan Orbih and few beneficiaries of his bad leadership should urgently be addressing and not to turn to a performing governor of the state, Adams Oshiomhole. Recently, instead of facing Abolagba and other change agents in Edo PDP calling for immediate sack of Orbih and his entire exco as well as the Local Government executives, the loquacious Orbih believes that his new headache is for the EFCC to investigate the Edo State Governor for reasons best known to him.
The Edo State PDP at a press conference held by Dan Orbih stated that the financial crisis in the state that has made some local government councils in the state unable to pay salaries was caused by the governor, Adams Oshiomhole. In the face of this mid-day hallucination, the beleaguered PDP chairman called on the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), to probe into the finances of the state under the Oshiomhole administration.
Orbih, claimed the council chairmen earn between N1.7million and N1.2 million each every (he was not sure of the figures he was giving to the media) month as security votes, while the legislative arm of the councils earns about N1 million each as security votes. He equally claimed that the combined sum of N42 million was nowhere close to the over N500 million Governor Oshiomhole earns every month as security votes and that the total security vote of the councils in a year is about what Oshiomhole collects every month.
Dan Orbih ought to have reasoned and ruminated on why the Comrade Governor requested that the security votes of the councils which were unable to pay their staff salaries should be suspended until they cleared the salaries owed their workers because ever since the workers filed into the streets to be protesting, Comrade Oshiomhole has maintained that the council helmsmen were responsible for the problem of non-payment and not himself as the workers were misled by the PDP to believe. Even then the council chairmen owned up that it was their business and not the Edo State Governor to pay Local Government Staff.
The point remains that while workers of the affected councils were disturbing the peace of the state, workers of three local governments whose responsible chairmen paid their salaries up to date were going to work and were not part of the protests. Dan Orbih should get it into his empty skull that the chairmen of the affected local government areas came out and claimed responsibility for the unpaid salaries. The agitations of workers fuelled by Edo PDP raged in the streets for over a month until the governor intervened by announcing suspension of security votes of affected councils with the explanation that it was immoral for the council chairmen to collect their salaries every month and their security votes while their staff went home without salaries for seven to eight months in some cases. Oshiomhole is not owing Edo State workers any salary, not even pensioners in the state. Edo State Governor deserves an award from the PDP for being the only state in the same bracket of monthly allocation that is not owing its workers. Delta, Rivers and Cross River which are rich oil producing states earning billions of naira are still owing workers salaries till date. Oshiomhole deserves commendation and not Orbih’s wicked accusations.
This was why Oshiomhole was roundly commended by Edo people who saw the big sense in his directive to the Local Government chairpersons. Everybody in Edo lauded it and now the workers are getting their salaries and have returned to work. Why is Dan Orbih such a backward man who sees nothing good in the best administration that has governed Edo since the return to democratic rule in 1999? This has remained the reason why Oshiomhole has been consistently backed by the people of Edo State and Dan Orbih, in spite of his numerous lies against the Oshiomhole’s government has continued to suffer defeat in all elections.
Little wonder, therefore, Abolagba et al alleged that the current leadership of the PDP across the state has failed to win any election in the past six years and therefore stressed the need to elect new leadership of the party at all levels so that the party will focus on the 2016 governorship election in the state. From my experience in politics, I know that Orbih would not survive the new move to throw him out.
Interestingly too, Edo State Governor, Adams Oshiomhole, recently said he has welcomed the call by the state chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party to the Economic Financial Crimes Commission to conduct a probe on the state local government account. So that Orbih would not go thinking that his administration is afraid of probe.
The Governor, in a statement by his Special Adviser on Media and Public Affairs, Prince Kassim Afegbua, urged the anti-graft agency to begin the probe starting from 1999 when the opposition party controlled the state government.
By welcoming the EFCC to probe the State joint account with the local governments, it was clear that Oshiomhole has nothing to hide and the shame is for Dan Orbih and his failing party. The state under Oshiomhole’s leadership has been driven by prudence in the management of resources, the achievements of his administration in the last six years “far supersede that of the PDP’s 10 years of misrule in the state.
Dan Orbih should also be courageous enough to ask the EFCC to ensure that such investigation should cover the period between 1999 and 2008; such investigation should also look into the allocations and expenditures of the local government, their procurement procedures, who did the procurements, at what costs and the total accruals into the coffers of local government accounts across the state, within that period of 1999 to 2008.
We are convinced that it is only through such investigation that the public would be able to know who siphoned local government funds between the government of Comrade Oshiomhole and that governed by the PDP for 10 years.
Instead of wasting his energy in a fruitless journey to drag the image of Oshiomhole in the PDP mud, I believe that Abolagba and his associates have thrown a major challenge to Dan Orbih. The PDP faithful are waiting for the immediate resignation of Dan Orbih otherwise, they would be left with no option but to take the bull by the horns and show him the ignoble way out of their party he is wrecking.
· Mr. Dan Owegie is a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Edo State.
