BARELY a month that Senator Monday Okpebholo was sworn-in as elected governor of Edo State, Crusoe Osagie had continued with his parroting of half-truths and outright lies in a clandestine game-plan to confuse the people and heat up Edo polity.
Crusoe Osagie, a longtime Special Adviser on Media and Public Affairs to Mr. Godwin Obaseki, the immediate-past governor of the state, who had had eight years of uneventful governance and stranglehold of the unfortunate state, was obviously brought from the doldrums to carry out a post-governorship venture (hazardous it is), to distort and stop the bid to probe and bring to justice key players of the Obaseki’s government, who are serially accused of enormous sleaze.
In an acidic denial statement, an emboldened Crusoe Osagie, amongst other things, clamped down on the latest revelation by Mr. Julius Anelu, the state’s Accountant General, that the Obaseki’s government, in which he had consistently served, had incurred a whopping N1 trillion domestic debt and another huge N282 billion as external debt, as at November 11, 2024. Anelu disclosed this to members of the State Assets Verification Committee, who evaluated the financial and material assets of the state, followed by the change of governorship baton from ex-Governor Obaseki to Senator Okpebholo.
Anelu also informed the press during the meeting, inter alia, that his office had written to all banks in the state that had transactions with the state government, to furnish his office with their statements of accounts to enable him furnish the committee with the information.
Obaseki and Crusoe Osagie, who always have issues with official diligence, accountability and financial figures, were the same, who had earlier called it a bluff when the same Mr. Anelu, the state’s treasury holder, with some of his subordinates were arrested and detained by Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), the dreaded national anti-graft agency, on the adhesive allegations of multiple and questionable (lately) withdrawals of huge amounts, in multiple billions, from the state’s treasury, on the order of the ex-governor.
“You lied about Edo’s debt profile. Provide the details of the debt claims, a blatant lie that should be described as a cocktail of complete falsehood.”
Screamed the Crusoe Osagie’s audacious statement ordered by Mr. Obaseki, which derogatorily blamed Governor Okpebholo, as the source of the statement, instead of directing their aggression at Mr. Anelu, the Obaseki’s once principal treasury officer, who spilled the beans.
Continuing defiantly that it was a brazen lie told to the Edo public by Okpebholo, Crusoe Osagie released another innuendo that the “falsehood is a smokescreen to mark his incompetence, lack of ideas and inability to perform in office”
Crusoe Osagie further asserted; “For the record, the major debts owed by Edo State were loans from the World Bank, which were taken under the Comrade Adams Oshiomhole-led administration, His Excellency, Mr. Godwin Obaseki, the immediate past governor of the State judiciously managed for the past eight years, ensuring they are properly serviced and contained from expanding”
But, inquiries made to the Abuja’s Office of the Nigeria’s Debts Management Office (DMO), and as confirmed by its website location at (https://www.dmo.gov.ng/debt-profile/sub-national-debts?), that the debt profile of the state as at December 31, 2016, about the same time Comrade Adams Oshiomhole handed over to Mr. Obaseki, stood at N45,091,949,123.94 domestic debt and US$ 183,641,998.74 external debt.
A further look at the sub-national debts profile with the DMO, as at December 31, 2020, when the Obaseki’s government completed its first tenure of four years, had N80,788,643,633.19 domestic debt and US$ 280,299,984.40 external debt.
Interestingly, simple differences between the debt profiles under Oshiomhole (from 2008 to 2012) for eight years double tenure, and a single four years of Obaseki’s (from 2016 to 2020), showed N35,686,694,539.25 and US$ 76,657,975.66. It then means that the Oshiomhole’s government borrowed much lesser than the Obaseki’s whose debt profile within four years was equivalent to the eight years’ debt by Oshiomhole.
Incontrovertibly, it is Crusoe Osagie and ex-Governor, who accused Okpebholo of a falsehood, who must’ve bandied some lies in their combative press statement that they didn’t expand their borrowing after the era of Adams Oshiomhole, whereas the DMO had proven otherwise.
Yet still, Osagie is known to have glorified lies and and false propaganda into an ignoble and makeshift statecraft, which had formed the bedrock of the Obaseki’s policy and activities.
Funnily, Osagie and his boss are still persuaded that misinformation and backhand dealings are all they need to swing back and remain in public relevance, in their Quixotic expectation that Asue Ighodalo, their unsuccessful candidate in the last governorship election, would be declared winner by the election courts, and they would once more carry on with their unholy enterprise of making Edo their ATM.
With a committee recently set up for the resurrection of the residual and failed faction of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), a platform which was recently kicked out of Edo governorship power, Crusoe Osagie had been brought back to the dead-end of deploying more false propaganda for that purpose.
Good riddance to a public nuisance, a twaddle talker and writer. For, the last the Edo public had heard of ‘Crusoe, the GO’s Yes Man’ was when his numerous competitors had scared him away from the table of the worst governor in Edo’s history, where there were no more crumbs, pompousity and a willful handling of the Social Media irritants. He was yanked to the Nigerian Observer, a pioneered and state-own newspaper staples, which the Obaseki’s government, with the destructive claws of a lion, had grounded, like the Benin public library , its general hospital and other signature monuments of the state.
Alas, let him be told that there is a terminal date for “Tore na gbina’, his combative public-media relations stunt of “Come Down And Let’s Fight”. There are always match-mates and over-match!
Tony Erha, a journalist and social critic, writes from Abuja .
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