Governor Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State says people of the state will not allow the Peoples Democratic Party (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) 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 defence 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.
“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 APC, 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.”
On his part, Obaseki 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.”
