One of the leading aspirants in the forthcoming Edo State governorship election, Godwin Obaseki, in this interview with Global Excellence, shares his mission and vision for a progressive state. Excerpt…
How has it been working with Governor Oshiomhole as Chairman of the state Economic Team?
It has been quite a rewarding experience. Eight years ago before Comrade Oshiomhole came into power, we had the opportunity to rethink through what we felt the economy of Edo State should look like and what the imperatives were at that time and what we thought we had to do. We had done the crude financial modelling of what the economy and what the finances of Edo should look like. We had certain goals and target in mind as to what Comrade Oshiomhole should accomplish or achieve during his tenure particularly the first phase of his administration. And then looking back seven and half years later, it has been fulfilling and quite an interesting experience and we could spend weeks talking about what has happened over the last seven years but I will say that our expectation is that, with the proper leadership, with the human capacity to manage resources efficiently, we have enough resources internally if properly harnessed to kick-start our economic growth. We have accomplished a lot as a result of the high quality of leadership provided by the comrade governor which involves prudent management of the resources. But more importantly, our procurement process has given us quite a lot of advantage.
How did you meet Governor Oshiomhole?
When Comrade Oshiomhole said he was going to run, I saw someone in him a great advocate, someone who could convert our frustrations into development. I saw someone who was not content in lamenting with the decay we all saw but someone who could have the courage and the boldness to help promote and foster the changes that we required and that was how I got attracted to him. I got close to him because I had worked with him briefly at the presidential committee on pension reforms in Nigeria. Even though we were on opposite side of the divide, he didn’t trust us coming in from the financial industry and he saw that the whole purpose of involving in the pension reforms was because we wanted business for ourselves to the detriment of the workers. Even though we were in two sides of the divide, working closely with him gave me confidence in his ability and closeness to know that he understood the macro and micro economic issues that were required to transform not just the financial system but the economy as a whole. So with that background of his, I was very confident that if he was supported to embark on his gubernatorial ambition, no doubt, he would make a good governor.
What inspired you to want to run for governorship of Edo State being your first time in politics?
Having been part of the system in the last seven years, even though it was on an advisory basis, I felt that with what I have been endowed with, I should be able to serve diligently. I felt I should pay to serve and not be paid to serve and from that stand point, one was able to use the experience from the private sector to begin to understand how government functions and why does government function the way it does in Nigeria today. I was also privileged to grow in a home of civil servants, so I understood what the structure of the civil service ought to be and to my greatest surprise, what I found was that the way government ran when I was growing up was not totally different from the way it now runs. I began to understand why things have become so bad and why things have fallen apart so much. So my experiences in the private sector helped me to be able to make that comparison to understand how the private sector functions in relative to what is going on in government and the last seven years have helped me deepen my understanding of governance.
There is this fear that you may embark on excessive borrowing if elected as governor and that may plunge the state into debt, what is your reaction?
I think first of all, a lot of people, their understanding of finance and financing is not very sophisticated and they see borrowing as permanent indebtedness, borrowing is not good but governments all over the world usually spend money, they don’t have to create money that the society needs. Every society has a given amount of money; every economy has a given pool of funds and those funds are supposed to be utilized in such a way to help create more opportunity to create more wealth. That is why when you go to Europe and America, you find out that government continually issues municipal bonds, government bonds, treasury bonds; these are all instruments by government to borrow and these are standard world class instruments that government uses to finance its operations but you are limited. Government just don’t borrow indiscriminately, they only borrow to the extent they have the capacity to pay and how does government derive the capacity to pay, it is ability to impose taxes and levies. The total indebtedness of Edo State and the figures can be paid under two or three years from our current tax revenue if we don’t do anything and spent our taxes to pay without even growing the size of the economy, we will pay up the debt we have today without Abuja in two years.
What are your plans for Edo if elected governor?
My vision and what I intend to do separately are two separate things. I don’t need to do much differently because I just need more of what we have done in the last seven years. If you look at the last seven years; it was like laying a foundation for our house, you know the amount of materials that need to go underneath the soil, the amount of concrete you need to bury, the design work you need to do, where the pillars are going to be to suspend the house, that is what we have done in the last seven years. We just came out of the foundation level, we now need to begin to raise that structure of the house up to the level so that you can get to the first level, deck it, take it to another level, depending on the plan you have, you can take the building as high as you want to, depending on the foundation you have laid. The Edo project which is the house that we started seven years ago will be housed above many in this country and so we have taken time out to lay very solid foundation in terms of ensuring that we have reinstated the whole idea that government is about the people. That there must be governance, there must be prudence in the management of government resources because these resources belong to the people. You can’t just deep your hand in the treasury and take people’s money and do whatever you like with it. You have to have a sense of accountability; you have to show the people and tell them what you are doing with their money. You are going to have a plan, development is not accidental, and it is a well-thought out series of ideas. We have built the infrastructure, the basis for this government, we have not built all the roads we need to build in Edo State, and we have not even built 20%, so we need to continue to build on our infrastructure. But this time around, we want to direct those infrastructures and make sure that we get social and economic benefit from them which are all what we have done.
