BY SIMEME EHIAKHAME

They seem to have found their scurrilous voices, dishing out lies and lies and seeking to pool wool over our faces.  Even in an era when information is now driven by the social and popular media, they seem to be married to their false spin of a revolving door.

When it soothes them, facts are walked on their legs and completely denied. They appear to be caught in their own hysteria and diatribe laced with fiddlesticks, about a state where nothing works.

Because for 10 years, they fed the people with excuses of lack of funds and a meal of scorpion, they hardly can reconcile how Comrade Adams Oshiomhole has been able to garner the funds for massive investment in infrastructure. And the comrade’s traducers naively think that the only way to regain relevance and win the heart of the people is to deny his startling work.

But the Edo people who can perceive Oshiomhole’s work on the streets certainly know better. With the advantage of the new media, many have sent pictures of the on_going projects to friends and family members in different parts of the world. The people are wiser not to gauge the current development strides in Edo from the prism of those who hardly wish the state well.

Each time you listen to the ranting of Dan Orbih, factional chairman of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) or Kenneth Imasuagbon, one of the party’s governorship aspirants and their hireling, Okaredia Ihimekpen, one is simply amused by their fairy tale which is merely filled with sound and fury. They are lost in their gory picture of Edo.

In their anxiety to garner cheap support, hoodwink the people and rekindle their party’s drowning image, they are struggling feverishly to deny reality. What a pity. It was amusing listening to the sermon of Orbih, who presides over a faction of a party that governed Edo for 10 years without anything to show for it, on the collapse of education in the state.

He didn’t have the courage to acknowledge Oshiomhole’s government’s current renovation work, which has already transformed schools like Idia College, St Maria Goretti and Niger College, all in Benin City and other schools located across the state like Holy Trinity Grammar School, Sabongida Ora, St Angela’s Girls School, Auchi, St John’s Grammar School, Fugar, St Paul’s Grammar School, Igarra, Annunciation Catholic College, Irrua and others. Reviving and restoring integrity to public schools in Edo state is work in progress.

It is estimated that given the present level of work, most of the 598 secondary schools in the state would have been rehabilitated by the year 2015. With the access to the UBE funds, it is also envisaged that many of the primary schools will be transformed if the current pace of work is sustained.

Exploiting the last students protest at Ambrose Alli University (AAU), Ekpoma, Orbih mounted the pulpit to provide false succour. Like a drunken man just emerging from a burukutu bar, he simply latched at the recent resignation of some aides of the governor even before pondering on the facts as evidence of cracks in the government.

Without shame and in what has become a refrain, Orbih threw tirades and jabs at the governor. He had stuck to his worn out propaganda that Oshiomhole was only planting flowers until he started sounding like a broken record. For a state where governance broke down for close to 30 years, it would perhaps have made some sense for the PDP which held sway for 10 years to plant flowers rather than leaving it almost prostrate.

His soul mate, a rather garrulous Imasuagbon even told his audience at a recent Kaakaki programme on African Independent Television (AIT) that the government led by Comrade Adams Oshiomhole is doing nothing. For a man who can hardly appreciate the dualisation of the Airport Road, a major gateway into Benin City in the 21st century, Imasuagbon may just be too short sighted to be considered seriously as an aspirant to Osadebey House.

On one breadth, he sought to deny Oshiomhole’s outstanding performance, on the other hand, he says his roads do not lead to any major economic lifeline. That he sought to govern Edo on the platform of lies, fraud, half-truth and fiddlesticks is unfortunate. How can the people entrust governance to a man who tends to speak from ten sides of his mouth.

Perhaps, Imasuagbon needs to be told that presiding over the affairs of a highly sophisticated state like Edo is beyond the bubble gum. Governance is about vision and farsighted planning and not meant for people who can hardly understand issues of development.

Ihimekpen in his not too brilliant spin to exculpate the Minister of State for Works, Chris Ogiemwonyi from the slow pace of work on the Benin – Ore road, also sounded comical when he tried strenuously to deny Oshiomhole’s bold work in transforming the virtually decrepit Costain Isonorho, now renamed Gani Fawehinmi Layout. Costain Isonorho was for close to 30 years an environmental disaster area until the comrade governor moved in caterpillars.

Rather than complement Oshiomhole’s vision to rebuild dilapidated roads in Benin City and give the federal roads across Edo a facelift, Ogiemwonyi who was recently denied royal blessing by the Oba of Benin, resorted to sophistry about the government not adhering to proper designs.

If Oshiomhole’s roads are to be faulted, certainly not on designs which include covered drains particularly in built up areas. Ihimekpen who prefers to put a veil on his role as publicity secretary of the factional PDP, even claim that all the federal roads in Benin City have been awarded to contractors for facelift without giving any details.

Because of the very rigorous level of supervision by the governor, his senior aides and hired consultants, some of the contractors who were indicted for shoddy jobs were directed to correct them.  There’s really no problem if this level of commitment has now gingered a wake up call on the Federal Government to rebuild federal roads in the state. After all the plan to dualise the Benin – Abraka road is a welcome development.