Obaseki wasted billions of naira on consultants, left huge debts for successor -Afegbua

Prince Kassim Afegbua, Commissioner for Information and Strategy in Edo State spoke to TITUS AKHIGBE, Regional Editor (South South) of The Daily Monitor on a number of crucial issues ranging from the immediate past administration of ex-governor, Godwin Obaseki to Governor Monday Okpebholo’s which is one year in office.

Excerpts:

Hon. Commissioner, on November 12, 2025, your principal would have clocked one year in office. How has it been?

We ask for your support and solidarity because the media, as the fourth estate of the realm, must adequately report the facts and not the fiction of our government process. The present administration came on stream on the 12th of November 2024. By this year, November 12th, 2025, we will be marking one year in office. What we intend to do, to cut costs, we essentially will do commissioning of projects across the three senatorial districts. Projects in the area of healthcare delivery, projects in the area of education, projects in the area of road reconstruction, projects in the area of agricultural intervention. Our third round of projects that time will permit us. We are hoping to start going around the state, maybe from 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th. We’ll be going around the senatorial districts to commission specific projects. And we intend to carry you people along because it’s essentially a media event. Media event to the extent that we will crave your audience to participate for you to go and see practical governance. The ones you can see visibly and not projects that are captured in MOU for which we can’t find their location; like it was in the previous administration. We are conscious of the role of the media in informing our people and one year is not enough to do to capture or provide solutions to all the problems plaguing the state. If we pretend that we didn’t inherit rots and decay in infrastructure, we will not be doing justice for our historical antecedent. Where we are coming from, the trajectory of governance, is one that we thought Edo was already an El Dorado. As captured by the ‘vuvuzelas’ of the previous administration, very active social media population who have been defending inanities of the past. But we have a governor whom they denigrated. They literally thought he had no basis to contest election. They called him all kinds of names. They called him a panel-beater. Unknown to them, the panel-beaters are fixers of accidented vehicles. The ‘Edo Accidented Vehicle’ is being presently panel-beaten by Distinguished Senator Monday Okpebholo, the Governor of Edo State. When you have a vehicle that is badly accidented, all the headlights are off.  You only require a solid panel-beater to be able to fix such a vehicle. And I can tell you without any fear of favor, that the Edo Accidented Vehicle is being gradually fixed by Governor Okpebholo. And the vehicle has bounced back to the road again. We are not pretending that in fixing that accidented vehicle, we have to step on toes. Toes in the area of cultism, toes in the area of kidnappers or kidnapping, toes in the area of those who plunder the resources of this state in a very wanton manner, toes against those who decided to detain the growth and development of Edo State. And we will not, you know, relent. In our efforts to fix our roads, fix our decayed infrastructure in the area of education, fix the human capital development that was taken over by foreign consultants who have since eloped from the state. We will continue to step on toes of those who felt they own state and display all kinds of ugly conducts. We are very resolute, driven by a very strong political will to confront the challenges before us. It has not been rosy, but we thank God we have brought the vehicle from the mechanical shop now on the road. We are test-driving it. And before you can bring the vehicle to test-drive, having been heavily accidented, you know that a lot of work has gone into it. Now, we have started the Ramat fly over, which we are doing to ameliorate the very terrible traffic situation at Ikpoba-Okha slope. We have also commenced another fly over at Dawson street. At some point in the life of this administration we will do a third fly-over around Dawson Street in or in Benin city.

We are told former governor Obaseki left a lasting legacy in education through what he called Edo Best…

 We have recovered a lot of schools. In trying to understudy what we met on ground; we thought the challenge in the education sector will not be much but we’re wrong. When we came on board and we were hearing something like Edo Best, we thought our schools have been properly fixed and that Edo Best initiative was what we needed to ensure full compliance with contemporary requirements for education of our people. But we were wrong. Edo Best was a conduit pipe by the previous government to defraud the state. They were paying N160 million every month to their consultants from 2018 up to the time that the government exited power in 2024. And what were they paying for? The consultants said they were writing similar lesson notes and there were tablets that they built application so that every teacher would key into that and that would just be a seamless translation to teaching in the classroom. But where were the classrooms? Apart from the deliberate intervention of the Oshiomhole administration in the name of Red Roof Revolution, we haven’t seen any tangible intervention in terms of reclaiming the schools in Edo State. Right inside Benin here, there are schools without windows, schools without chairs and tables, schools without teachers. Thank God that the Governor has commenced reclaiming those schools, one of which is the Army Day Secondary school which he built within eight weeks when they went on holiday. He bought chairs and tables and rebranded the entire school, fenced the entire compound to assume almost a brand-new structure. We are happy that across the entire state we have about 60 to 63 schools receiving attention as part of the first phase intervention. About more than half of that have been completed, part of which we will be commissioning. The teacher population has been abysmally low and we have integrated over 5,000 teachers into The Edo Civil Service.

What has your principal done for Edo people in the area of health care?

We have a lot of primary health care centres, about 60 of them, that we have recovered. We have also put them to good use. Our general hospitals that were in shambles before now are receiving serious attention, trying to repackage them.   We have also integrated 500 civil servants to fill up vacant positions and re-energize, overhaul and re-tool the Edo Civil Service. But for this administration, Edo Civil Service would have been a joke of the century because the previous governments abandoned the civil service and expended so much resources on the use of consultants. In the process, 41 agencies were established, most of which were conduit pipes to fleece the resources of the state. We thank God that we have come very strongly to inject new blood into that system.

 There’s rising Insecurity, especially kidnapping in the state?

In the area of security. We are proud to say that when the government of Okpebholo came on stream, the first thing he did was to buy over 60 Hilux trucks to assist the police, civil defence including the military for their mobility and logistics to combat crime and criminalities. In doing that, he was conscious of the fact that for us to have effective policing system, mobility is very key in getting people to locations where these crimes are committed or as a preventive measure to the outbreak of insecurity. We are happy that our intervention in that aspect is yielding fruits. We have not gotten to the climax of that but we can boldly say that we have impacted so positively in the area of security. Only three weeks ago, the Governor delivered 400 motor cycles to the police, civil defense and the DSS to help mobility to places that are very rural for which getting there by vehicle would prove very difficult, and the urgency of intervention also requires some urgency in movement, and we have seen how the military, police and civil defense have reached out to kidnap victims without too much time wasted in the process. So, we are happy that all of these interventions are working, we have improved the allocation we are giving to them, we have also improved the number of meetings we host, and as a result of having constant touch with security agencies, the Governor has created a Ministry of Public Security Office. The Office of Security and Safety, led by former Deputy Speaker, who will be having a lot of interfaces with security agencies, with a view to getting timely solutions to issues when they come up.

I want to make this point, particularly in the area of security, that please, people who do not understand how these issues work, issues of kidnapping and all of that… they should please keep their mouths shut, because often times, you see, television anchors discuss kidnapping issues of a particular individual on television, compounding even the process of seeking their release, you know, in the name of trying to report kidnappings across the state. We want to plead with them that when people are kidnapped, the less noise you make about it, the easier it is to secure their release. The moment you place too much premium on the release of those victims, the kidnappers will have an idea, of who this person is so important, so we need to increase the ransom. In the same security of the state, we have opened up some commands in Edo North, we have in Edo Central, around Uromi area. We have pleaded with the military; they have assisted with some soldiers. Only last week, 100 policemen were deployed to Okpella as a way to combat any kidnapping in that area. That again explains my earlier point, that Edo is sharing boundaries with quite a number of states, and they present themselves as exit routes to escape from being arrested.  Okpella is a typical example.  We understand that the tendency is for them to feel that, oh, there’s so much money, you know, with those workers in these companies. So we have put extra measures in place, there’s a military post in Okpella, as we speak, there’s also a police post. And the particular opportunity has also granted Okpella the status of having an Area Command. The structure for that is currently going on. So these are part of our interventions. Lastly on that, we recruited 2,500 men and women into the Edo Security Corps. And they were trained by soldiers and they have since been deployed to different local governments of the state.

Is it true that former governor Obaseki hurriedly commissioned uncompleted projects, including Radisson Hotel before his exit?

The Stella Obasanjo Hospital was to wear the garment of a General Hospital. But what did they do? They awarded a contract, 50-55% completion. They invited Obasanjo, former President of the Federal Republic, and they commissioned the place. With the commissioning of the project, the understanding is that, oh, it is ready for use. As we speak, there is no electricity there. There is no water. Mortuary is not there. Doctors’ restroom is not there. Doctors’ pavilion is not there. So many things. And to crown it all, the contractor is being owed almost N7.3bn. The consultant recruited to oversee the completion of that place. He charged N965 million, almost a billion naira. And by the time the administration was exiting power, the guy resigned his appointment when his fee had been paid 100%. We extended invitation to him. We never saw anything. We never saw him appear before the Asset Verification Committee and till date, we couldn’t even define the work he did. Now, the government has given a marching order, that funds will be paid. Even though it was an over-bloated contract, the funds will be paid. And in no time, Edo people will reap the benefits of that particular hospital. And the same thing goes for the education hub at Iyaro. You remember that that building was burnt down and it was now rebuilt. The structure they have there, the noise they make out there, you would think that everything has been done and completed. But again, the same pattern of abandoned projects, where the government is owing N3.3billion, according to the contractor and then you begin to ask yourself how much is the total cost of such a project that N3.3 billion will still be outstanding. It means that in the past, they were not paying contractors, they were just telling them go and take money get bank guarantee and do this job, we’ll pay you when they were going because they were rushing to do all this to get votes but Edo people were not deceived.

There’s a traditional issue involving some Enigies within Benin Kingdom…

We are happy that we have reclaimed our lost glory. There are no quarrels and divisions in the party, the APC, which is the ruling party in the state, unlike what occurred before when PDP was factionalised into three. The government side, the legacy side and the ordinary people’s side. We have due respect to our monarch, the very cerebral King (Oba of Benin), whose cosmopolitan orientation defines his persona, a man who understands our culture and tradition. We are calling for the fullest respect. We have restored the sanctity of his leadership. All those people, who had tried to balkanise his kingdom by promoting some Enigies to assume the status of king, the government has since checkmated that. Because in building the Edo story and the Edo narrative, we must be conscious of the homogeneity of our people, our cultural linkages, our heritage, across the length and breadth of this state and across all the 18 local governments. The often said mantra is that Edo is one. Edo of one mind. That means in Edo we are one.

As things stand now, what is the debt profile of Edo State?

You have been in this state, you can see the trajectory of governance. At different levels, you saw Oshiomhole. Before Oshiomhole, you saw who presided over the state. You saw Obaseki’s eight years. Even though with self-acclaimed exposure that they received N1.68 trillion, they left a debt hanging on our neck, almost N600bn. So, on road projects alone, we inherited about N187bn of claims by contractors. And so we are just like paying for the halitosis of the powers of the Obaseki administration. And we are saying that rather than him junketing all over the world saying that he is thanking Edo people, he should come home and answer for his failures and failures.