State Lawmaker Loyal to Obaseki Backs Ize-Iyamu

State Lawmaker Loyal to Obaseki Backs Ize-Iyamu

By Adibe Emenyonu

Ahead of the September 19 governorship election in Edo State, the lawmaker representing Akoko-Edo II constituency and loyalists of Governor Godwin Obaseki, Hon. Emmanuel Agbaje, has dumped the governor for Peoples Democratic Party Candidate, Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu.

He apologised to his constituent for his inability to meet his political obligations under the present administration of Governor Obaseki.

Agbaje is one of the 10 lawmakers that have been sitting since the controversial inauguration of the state assembly last year July.

Addressing his supporters in Igarra over the weekend, Agbaje said the current system as being operated was strangulating them as lawmakers.

He said: “The only time I can remember that I was a true House of Assembly member was the first one year and five months and that was when Comrade Adams Oshiomhole was governor.

“In that one year and five months Adams Oshiomhole approved our constituency projects. I sited one in Ward One, I sited a second one in ward 8, Enwan Mixed Grammar school, I sited another in Ososo Secondary school. These projects are all there uncompleted. Oshiomhole mobilised the contractors with 50 per cent of the value of the contracts and that is where the job has stopped till today. Since then, for the past four years we have been begging for those jobs to be completed even when we have not got new ones, is that fair?”

Continuing, Agbaje said, “Today, I am pained because I have wasted years in the House of Assembly without being able to deliver on my campaign promises to my constituents, without being able to meet the slightest of the projections we promised our people because we have a system that doesn’t care about anybody. Here we have an opportunity and this opportunity is very simple, it is either we want to continue like this, but me I don’t want to end my eight years like this. The opportunity is that we get a change, a new system that will now bring out better governance that will benefit all of us. So the choice is for our people and I know that we are not foolish.

“They say they did roads in Akoko-Edo, and the World Bank did roads for us. We are happy even though the standard of those roads are nothing to write home about because they are almost all being washed away. I want to appeal to all of us, I will not stick my neck into projecting this same system that has tied everybody’s hand.”

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