PAstor Osagie Ize-Iyamu is the Director-General of the Jonathan/Sambo presidential campaign in Edo State. In this interview with Vanguard, he insisted that President Goodluck Jonathan will win the presidential election despite the seeming popularity of Gen. Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC). He also dismissed claims by Governor Adams Oshiomhole that the people of the state will not vote for President Jonathan asserting that the President has impacted positively on the lives of the people of the state and would therefore win the state. Excerpts:
By Simon Ebegbulem
How it been campaigning for President Jonathan in Edo State?
It has been very interesting, when you have a sellable product, you don’t labour too hard marketing the product. But when the product is bad it becomes extremely difficult. Edo people see the president as their own.
They appreciate the challenges, they appreciate his achievements and they believe he deserves a second term. In many of the places we have gone to, the reception has been very good. A lot of times they have spent much time praying for him and of course counselled him that in his second term there are issues he needs to tackle more, like the issue of insecurity and ensuring that all the projects that are ongoing are completed so that before the end of his tenure, Nigerians will have uninterrupted light.
So I am very confident that when the election is done, the president will win overwhelmingly in Edo state.
Are you not worried with the seeming popularity if Gen. Buhari in the North?
Well, Buhari might be popular in the North but even then when we make the mistake thinking that the whole of the North is one, forgetting that the North is made up of different ethnic groups, people of different religions and even in terms of geo-political zones, we have three major zones in the North.
In the North Central for example, Buhari will find it extremely difficult to win any state there.
Even in the North West where he comes from, he cannot boast of winning all the states there. And of course in the North East, there are people that will vote for him, there are people that will also vote for Mr President
Don’t you think it will be difficult for him to win Edo state, since Governor Adams Oshiomhole has told the people of the state the direction to go?
Ize-Iyamu
If the Governor had distanced himself from Buhari’s campaign may be Buhari would have done better but by identifying with Buhari and by even saying that a vote for Buhari is a vote for Adams Oshiomhole, he has helped my job considerably in winning Edo because the truth is that if there is one man that Edo people do not want to see is the governor.
You will recall that in his first term he use to do road walks. What has happened? Is it that he is no longer physically fit or he has become too comfortable. He cannot do it because he knows that he will be alone. So Oshiomhole campaigning for Buhari is a minus.
This his second term has been a disaster, all the roads we were all singing about in the first term what happened to them in the second term? The University he promised the people of Edo South, what has happened to it?
Mother of all rallies
And when government resorts to lies people cannot be impressed. Look at the recent one, just because election is around the corner, he went to Okpella and he pretended to be flagging off a road job, he also did that during his election in 2011.
But it is claimed that youths in Edo State protested against you after the president’s campaign in Benin because of a N1.5 billion largesse?
I can tell you clearly that common sense will tell anybody that there is no way that you spend N1.5 billion for a state rally, even if it is mother of all rallies that will climax the entire exercise, such an amount is ridiculous. But we traced this story to the door steps of Edo state government and the boys were provoked to the extent that they demonstrated to the PDP secretariat. Later they realized that there was no truth in that information. The state chairman told them that they was no such money. So Governor Oshiomhole recently confirmed his involvement when he mentioned in an interview that I was dragging him into it and that what happened was that we were supposed to give the youths N3,000 but we gave them N500, so where is the balance? The question is, when did Oshiomhole become a PDP member? Who are the PDP people that told him they got N3.000, where did he get the story from?
For the fact that the governor could tell the press that showed clearly that even the story N1.5billion is false. It will interest you to know that in their plan to frustrate the rally, he instructed the ECT buses not to ply the road that day thinking that it will deny those that want to go to the stadium the opportunity but he failed. The same youths that went to protest have since come forward to say we are sorry.
In any event has PDP told anybody that money meant for PDP rally was mismanaged? Why is Oshiomhole now crying more than the bereaved? I am the coordinator of the Goodluck campaigns and every day we are winning more converts, the moment he knows somebody in government wants to come and join us he quickly terminate his appointment.
Massive support
I can tell you that there is no truth or controversy in the President’s visit. The visit only opened the eyes of those in government to the massive support the president enjoys here and that support cut across.
You see our people are very sophisticated, there was a time they voted PDP and when they thought that PDP was taking them for granted and based on our appeal to them they said they will vote another party and that party has been in power for six and a half years and Edo people are asking themselves if things are any better?
Bendel brewery is dead, but it was operating when he came in, Edo courier service is no more, Bendel Insurance football club is gone. I was in government before, you cannot commission projects without disclosing financial figure, government that pretend to commission projects and silent about the cost. You did a road how much
did it cost? One of the things we will praise you for is financial prudence; the cost of executing projects has become the highest in the Country. I challenge him to make it public and not be making reckless statements.
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