The Edo chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC), has taken Governor Godwin Obaseki to task over a N9 billion loan recently approved by the State House of Assembly, saying that the loan was needless and will plunge the state into financial distress.
Addressing journalists yesterday, the state Acting Chairman of the party, Jarrett Tenebe, said the state was already suffering under a debt profile of N135 billion and $35.6 billion.
He lamented that, “While it is a monumental disaster that Edo State patrimony has been swindled by Obaseki led administration with an unassailable, humongous debt profile of N135 billion and $35.6 billion, the governor is unyielding and unstoppable in his characteristic design to leave Edo State in ruin, by asking for a facility of N17.5 billion Naira few days ago, which was said to be N9 billion.
“It is important to state, that it is now in public and political space that the fiscal budget of Edo State was passed few weeks ago before the Edo State House of Assembly proceeded on leave without the commencement of the execution of the budget by the executive. It is most disheartening that the Edo State Government now is requesting for a facility of N17.5 billion with no corollary of project attached there to the said facility and also that the facility is not contained as loan to be taken in the 2024 fiscal budget just recently passed. A cursory perusal of the entire budget does not reveal where the project for the facility is ever captured.
“While it is important to state that the citizens of Edo State have been taken through difficult and hard times by the Obaseki led administration, it is our request and most profoundly too that the Obaseki administration stop these borrowings.”