Edo: Okpebholo to be sworn in today, as transition committee seek probe of N410bn debt

…Recommends review of MoU for newly commissioned Stella Obasanjo hospital

Senator Monday Okpebholo, the Gubernatorial candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the 2024 Edo State Gubernatorial elections is set to be sworn-in today.

Edo state, which had previously been a party ruled by the opposition party Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) will now be ruled by Senator Monday Okpebholo who defeated the PDP’s Asue Ighodalo.

Okpebholo polled 291,667 votes against 247,274 for Ighodalo. However, the PDP has complained of fraud and vowed to challenge the result in court.

As the Governor-elect prepared for his inauguration, a transition committee was inaugurated chaired by Dr Pius Odubu.

Presenting the report yesterday, Dr Pius Odubu said the committee was presented with N410 billion debts as against the N55 billion inherited by the outgoing government in 2016.

“For those of you who have the capability to fact-check, you will find out that the indebtedness today is much more. It is over N500 billion,”he said.

Odubu, who is an erstwhile deputy governor in the state, said the committee also recommended a review of Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) on the management of Central and Stella Obasanjo hospitals.

“All employment carried out in the recent past should be cancelled, while the governor should investigate the true ownership of the Ossiomo power plant and Radisson Blu Hotel.

“The same with Museum of West Africa Arts-MOWAA. We deserve to know the state’s equity in these companies as the outgoing government went blank on these enquiries.

“We also demanded a comprehensive review of the world bank funded EdoBest programme and a probe should be instituted to uncover its rather opaque operations.

“All major contracts issued by the state government under the Ministry of Roads and Bridges should be reviewed as they appear not to have followed due process, including the payment advance awarded to the contractors.

“The procurement agency indicted the government in its own report to the Transition Committee; hence we have advised the incoming Governor to take a critical review,” he said.

The committee chairman also called for the streamlining of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) ecosystem in the state, which he said appeared to be a duplication of duties.

“The outgoing government didn’t provide audited financial statements published or unpublished, hence the committee is advising the government to institute an enquiry into this.

“The government couldn’t account for the number of teachers in the state; hence we demand a proper teacher headcount,” Odubu said.

The committee chairman said the document, made up of a 24-page report and 800 annexures, was a product of three weeks of rigorous assignments, meetings, interactions, engagements and analyses of the documents presented to the committee.

“We are proud to present to Your Excellency, our report based on our findings after a careful examination and analyses of the official documents received from the outgoing government transition team.

“Your Excellency, it will interest you to know that the report being presented to you this afternoon was derived from our collective inputs during the several sessions we had as a team.

“We did not just carefully examine the five thematic pillars as presented by the government’s transition team, we took time to look at other information available to the committee through our interactions with relevant stakeholders in the state.”

Responding, the governor-elect commended the committee members for doing a thorough job, saying the document would help the incoming government