By GABRIEL ENOGHOLASE

BENIN—Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in Edo State, has challenged the state government to, “as a matter of urgency, declare the debt profile of Edo State, so that the citizens will know what they are in for.”

Oshiomohole

State Chairman of the party, Chief Dan Orbih, who addressed journalists in Benin, yesterday, was reacting to what he called the “ repeated denial  that the state was not indebted,” when confronted with the debt profile of the state.

He said that he was surprised that the government had set aside the sum of N20 billion in the 2014 budget for debt servicing.

He described as “tissues of lies,” the sack of 836 teachers in the state, saying “the state government is playing politics with the figure as no fewer than 3,000 teachers were relieved of their jobs without plan to recruit new ones and at a time when the schools are seriously under-staffed.”

However, Special Adviser to Governor Adams Oshiomhole on Media Affairs, Prince Kassim Afegbua, in his reaction, said that the state governor had never said that it was not indebted, insisting that  “what we have always said was that the debt profile of Edo State was not in the magnitude that the PDP has always painted it.

“There is no government in the world that will not borrow to meet its statutory obligations to the people. What is important is how the government uses such funds. In the past five years since this administration came into office, we have paid part of the inherited debts of the PDP, when they presided over the state.”

On the sack of teachers by the government, the Special Adviser said that the decision to lay-off the teachers was taken after an evaluation of the qualities of teachers in the state, adding that in the final analysis, there were teachers who were due for retirement, those without certificates and those who had their certificates right from their mothers’ wombs.

Chief Orbih also alleged that Governor Oshiomhole had failed to keep to the promises he made to the people of the state, including the one made to the famous stowaway teenager, Daniel Oikhena, and her mother.

Orbih said none of the promises made to Daniel and his mother, Evelyn, in a well publicised event in September, had been fulfilled by Oshiomhole, adding that the boy presently has no textbooks to read and notebooks to write in Edo College, where he was enrolled.

“Government did not fulfill the promise made to the family. People, who wanted to help them also stopped because they assumed they were being looked after by government, when it is not true.”