It’s insulting to ask Obaseki to return to Edo – PDP 

Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Edo, Dr Tony Aziegbemi, has said that no one can force or intimidate former Governor Godwin Obaseki to return to the state under any guise, until he chooses to do so.

He stated this on Wednesday in Benin, while responding to the state government’s demand that the former Governor return to the answer questions bothering on alleged financial mismanagement while he in office.

The State government had once hinted that it was compiling cases of financial mismanagement on various projects embarked upon by the immediate past administration.

Aziegbemi added that the PDP stands firmly with the former Governor on the needless assault on his transformational legacy projects and reforms.

He said: “Former Governor Obaseki is a free citizen of Nigeria. He has the right to stay and remain anywhere he so chooses. The Governor Obaseki had personally written to the EFCC before now and the EFCC has combed the Edo State government papers for the past eight years. And as we speak, we are also aware that there has not been any formal invitation to the former Governor for clarification.

“The point I’m making is, he is a free citizen of this country.  He decides where he wants to remain at a particular time. He cannot be intimidated. It is even nauseating, even insulting that Edo State government will now intimidate him to come to the state. So, I will just say that whenever he decides to come to Edo State, not because a government official or a Commissioner is now saying, he should come.”

Meanwhile, the Edo PDP chairman has challenged the Monday Okpebholo administration to account for the huge allocation it received from the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee since its inception.

Aziegbemi who displayed a table of statutory FAAC allocations received by the State and its Local Government Areas over the relevant period, noted that they show humongous inflows of public funds running into tens of billions of naira with no corresponding improvement in infrastructure.

“Yet the most disturbing question confronting Edo people today is simple and unavoidable: where is the evidence of this money on the ground?

“Even more troubling is the fact that statutory allocations continue to be released to unelected local government impostors, while duly elected chairmen, who have secured court judgments, are excluded from office. Edo people are therefore forced to ask whether public funds are being deployed for development or merely circulated within an illegitimate administrative structure,” he said.