I READ the interview by the Edo State Commissioner for Information and Orientation, Mr. Louis Odion, in the National Mirror of Wednesday, November 2, 2011 wherein he claimed that his boss and governor of Edo, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, inherited a bankrupt state.

He outlined a number of “creative ways”, to use his words, which Oshiomhole devised to get out of the rot of infrastructure and inability of the state to pay its bills, some of which was “maximum tax regime” to bolster the Internally Generated Revenue, IGR. He claimed the governor also cut down the cost of running government and was able to save up to N1 billion within the next year.

According to him: “It was the money he used as seed money for massive projects after the first year. From that humble beginning of having less than N300 million as IGR, the state as at last month recorded more than N1.6 billion as IGR, representing more than 500 percent increase”.

Odion said that the state had rehabilitated and reconstructed more than 512 schools and laboratories and had tarred more than 500 kilometres of roads. Read him: “It is true that Edo State at the moment is a vast construction site in the sense that we have more than 190 projects going on simultaneously across the three senatorial zones of the state. More than N120 billion have been committed in the process. It is also true that the state government went to the Capital Market to raise N25 billion. So, the projects we are executing now are being partly financed with what we raised from the Capital Market”.

He also claimed that “for a long time, there was no governance in Edo State, pointing out that what happened were stealing of public funds and sharing of our patrimony by godfathers. But in the last three years, Edo people have seen the difference. They have left darkness and have seen the light…”.

There is no doubt that Odion is trying to apply himself to his present assignment as a spokesperson and image-maker of Edo State Government under the watch of Oshiomhole. I also expect that in the discharge of his duties, he will inject a large dose of propaganda to achieve predetermined ends.

For instance, the figures he released and/or cited are quite interesting, but I doubt if they can sit pretty on factual foundations. Validations: His claim that Edo was bankrupt when Oshiomhole stepped in is arguable but what is not arguable is that a former governor whose machinery quietly propped up Oshiomhole’s governorship candidature on the ACN platform, was responsible for the bankruptcy.

In fact, former Governor Oserhiemen Osunbor and not Oshiomhole directly inherited an arguably bankrupt state and superintended it for 18 months, trying to lay solid infrastructure foundations, and he actually started quite a number of road projects and de-silting of Benin township drainages, before Oshiomhole came in through the November 14, 2008 Court of Appeal verdict.

The 18 months Osunbor spent in office were critical in terms of deliverables and/or democracy dividends; so, if there was infrastructure decay as claimed by Odion, Oshiomhole could not have appreciated the enormity of the tragedy inflicted on the state by his ally because Osunbor had already gone way ahead in the process of salvaging the deplorable condition of road infrastructure.

The essence of propaganda is to misinform with half-truths. Odion said it took the economist in Oshiomhole to save up to N1 billion from cutting down the cost of governance and spending the money so saved to launch massive projects in his first year in office.

What are these massive projects? How much did they cost? It is a fact that in Oshiomhole’s first year, he received about N40 billion as statutory allocation from the Federation Account; more than N8.798 billion as special release from Excess Crude Account; and about N11 billion from IGR, managing about N60 billion overall.

How much of this went into the so-called road infrastructure and other projects claimed to have been built by the State Government? How much, in that first year that Odion spoke about, was spent on salaries? These are particular details I expected Odion to tell Edo people. Was it N13 billion or N15 billion or N20 billion? Were there some savings and if there were, how much are we talking about?

After the first year, the expenditure outlook in the subsequent two years should have been declassified in the simplest forms (not the inscrutable genre of audited accounts that make no meaning to majority of people, especially the lumpen) so that Edo people would be able to know how much went into the so-called road infrastructure and other projects.

In three years, Edo Government under Oshiomhole has received close to N200 billion (from Federation Account, Excess Crude Account, VAT and 13 percent Derivation and IGR). If the N25 billion loan sourced from the Capital Market is added to it, one should be talking of over N200 billion in three years. This is certainly massive! If 65 percent of this went into infrastructure and projects, we should, as rightly claimed by Odion that more than N120 billion had been committed in the process, we would be talking of about N130 billion.

But the figure is not even the issue. The issue is the endemic corruption in the contract award process or system. How were the contracts awarded? By how much were the contracts inflated, not marked up for profit? Is the quantum of money expended on infrastructure and projects commensurate with what are on ground?

This is the bone of contention.

Mr. JOHN  AINOFENOKHAI, a public affairs analyst, wrote from Benin City, Edo State.