Edo State Governor, Godwin Obaseki, yesterday, declared that the N30b Benin stormwater project embarked upon by the previous administration was a ploy to defraud Edo people.
Obaseki stated this while inspecting the Textile Mill Road catchment of the project in Benin City.
He said the stormwater project, conceived by the previous administration, was designed not to work for the benefit of Edo people, adding that his administration will probe the project and recover all the money stolen through it.
“The stormwater project was a fraud. It was a contract to defraud Edo people. From what I see in this catchment area, the project was never designed to take water away from the area. The area was never drained.
You can see the level of what we are doing now compared with what the previous administration did,” he said.
Speaking further, he said: “It is almost two-meter difference. There is no way you can drain water from a low land into higher ground. We say we have experts and paid over N30b for this project. The person that supervised this project today calls himself a minister supervising bigger projects for the Federal Government. This is not acceptable.”
He added that the previous administration spent huge sums of money on the water storm project claiming that on completion, it would drain water from the area and restore the property of Edo people resident in the area.
Obaseki assured Edo people that his administration would do everything necessary to drain the area and restore life to the people, noting: “They spent N30b claiming that they want to take away the suffering of Edo people, de-flood the area and restore the value of people’s property, but see what has happened to the project for five years.”
He pointed out that his administration had done a greater job with less amount of money and that the state government would finally drain the area and restore life to people in the catchment area.
“I don’t like probes, but this time, we have to set up a panel to get the facts of what really happened. We can’t ignore such a huge amount of money. People must be made to account for their time in government,” he added.
-The guardian