•CONTINUED FROM WEDNESDAY
Matthew Aisagbonrhiodion Urhoghide, a pharmacist, is the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) ndidate for the seat of Edo South Senatorial
District. In this interview with our Benin Bureau Chief, FrancisOnoiribholo, Urhoghide says he has decided that a big chunk of his allowances will be committed to scholarships for the youths, particularly indigent students, empowerment for women, proper and adequate local representation, including adequate attention to “short-change” in revenue allocation and boundary delineation. Excerpts:
How do you drive that?
There are a lot of private concerns, the banks and all that that will come in and be part of it; and how do we maintain it? We can create facilities there, reception centres, maybe the last floor or last two floors where they can use as recreation centres for people, where one will be able to get the money to run the place but the youths have a place where they can go to where they can develop their skills outside just a conventional education setting.
Mathew Urhoghide
So, if you do that, the restiveness and crime and the stealing in our society will be reduced. Those who want to go to school will have the facilities with which to go to school, those who want to go to film industry will also have the facilities in the youth centre to support them. Those people that want to take to sports they will be able to take to it, those people who are strong in academics will be able totake to it. The development of a comprehensive youth centre is very, very important and their locations I have been looking at. For instance, in my own ward, Ward 2, I have seen an area around the Ogba Zoo which is a large area government have decided to de-forest and if we are able to get that place with the large expanse of land it will be very good for people in Oredo and then of course we can go to Ovia, old Ovia and then we can go to the old Orhionmwon, if we have those facilities a first of its kind it will be good for them.
The same thing with women, all those things that can lead to their enhancement. If we have a government, a PDP government come 2016 by the grace of God, I am going to press it on the governor that the way Local Government administration is today in this country does not really benefit a lot of our people. Why? It has happened in two states, in Kano and in Lagos where you have what they call development centres.
What is their reason?
You will find out that the way our local governments are disposed today with their Headquarters to a large extent they are very far fromthe centre of activity. You raised an issue in this meeting that the autonomy they are talking of, that our legislators voted against it because they do not understand the full implication. If they understand the full implication it is not only in what we call the physical aspect which is the monetary aspect of Local Government administration, not only about resources, it is also about the provision of good governance, organisation, particularly of the people and the environment today in local government.
How do you explain it, for instance, let me take a very typical example. We are here now in Oredo Local Government Area; Oredo Local Government Area has its headquarters around the Ring Road, the council is at Ring Road, do you know that we have rural communities in Ward 2, there are 36 villages, in fact the last time they registered voters, they registered 32,000 voters, in which case those that are less than 18 years which probably will be more in population are there too. How will the people in thosevillages access the Local Government administration? Even if it is
Ward 2 to come to Ring Road, if you have Ikpoba/Okha, which is very near, the other side of the road is Ikpoba/Okha and if Ikpoba/Okha has its headquarters at Ogbeson ward 8 and you have four wards in Ikpoba Hill how will those people access the local government administration that is in Upper Sakpoba or how will somebody in Ologbo within the same local government access his local government administration? So, you need to create what we call Development Centres so that you will be able to take Local Government Administration really closest to the people; that is why I am saying that the configuration of local government now is not the best. If now we cannot do constitutional amendment, we can do adjustment. The adjustment we have to do like they did in Lagos State. If it is 18 local government areas we can create one in there, we can create two additional Development Centres, may be Ologbo is far from it, the four wards that you have in Ikpoba Hill which is a development centre will be closer to the people. The same thing you have in Oredo, the same also in Orhiomwon, somebody is in Abudu and you are talking of Urhonigbe and the same thing you have in Edo Central, the same thing you have in Edo north. So what we should do really, if it is government closest to the people then let it be indeed closest to the people and if an act of legislation can correct this let it be the one that we should be talking about.
And again for me as Edo South Senator, those things that have agitated my mind are: one, the issue of inequity and under representation in the State Assembly. The delineation of the state constituencies does not favour my senatorial district; it is not in tandem with the purported population. I say purported because if it is true that the demographics we have from the recent census figures of 2006 and you are saying that this state has a population of 3.2 million people and Edo South has 1.688 million people, in which case it is 52% of the state. Therefore, if the representation at the state Assembly is based on population as an index then in that case, out of the 24 seats in the state Assembly, why do we have only 10 and the other fractions of about 48 or 49 per cent have 14 seats? It is an inequity and it is an injustice. It does not conform to the principle of representation.
How do you redress the situation?
What you do, the force you have in the political pursuit depends on the number of voices that are there to advocate for you, the number of voices that are talking for you. That inequity has to be corrected because we will not take it. You see a local government like for instance Etsako west that has a population of about 250,000 people has two representatives, whereas Ikpoba/Okha that has about 370,000 people they have one representative. Egor they have 374,000 people and they too have one and of course you know it too, other local governments like even Esan North East with a population 197,000 people they have two. So with the present delineation, under-representation is very preponderant in my senatorial district and I believe if we too must be thinking of equity, justice and fairness this issue must be addressed.
What other areas are taking about?
Number two, Edo State is described as a Niger Delta state because of the presence of oil and gas in our state. But first, oil. You know it that the three local government areas that are oil producing are in Edo South Senatorial District, that is Ikpoba/ Okha, Orhionmwon and Ovia North East, they are within the purview of my senatorial district. If these ones are the ones that are producing oil, are we getting our fair share of the 13 per cent derivation, I will say no, we are not getting it. Edo State gets the least from oil proceeds from the 13% derivation that is a priority to the government of the oil producing states. Why is Edo State the least? Edo state is the least because the access that we have to the sea where we are talking of the oil deposit in the seat of the Niger Delta, once, we hitherto have had access to the sea to the Bight of Benin but with the boundary adjustment that have been wrongly done, Ondo and Delta States have taken our portion of the oil that we have in the estuaries of the Niger Delta.
So we are calling for boundary adjustment, if we want to do it out of legislation, we have to do so, so that they can come and open us up so that Edo State can get more of its own proportion of the revenue from the 13% derivation which we are not getting now. These are issues that are agitating my mind, they are basic issues. That is why I say those who have been there since; these issues have been there since 1999. Those in the state assembly, those in the national assembly they have not pursued it, particularly those who even want to compete for this same position with me have been in the national assembly for a long time , they have not done it, they have not found it wise, they have not found it expedient to do it and that is why we are saying that they should give us space so that we will be able to articulate these pressing problems and bring them to the fore in national discuss. We will be able to bring them to the national assembly, otherwise when we are talking of constitutional amendments now some of these issues should have been coming up by way of amendment but because of their very passive nature and of course, nonchalance, we have not been able to drive some of these issues. They are issues that are agitating my mind and they are going to occupy the front burner once I get to the senate because this whole business is about me and my people.
Incidentally, it is your people that elected you even though you are going to be described as Senator of the Federal Republic; consequently, the people you represent too must have their fair share of their voice in national politics. That is why I am in a hurry to bring Edo South back to national visibility, national relevance, and national politics because we have been in the doldrums for too long.
Look at our history, our history is replete with greatness; it was one of the kingdoms and later empire in the medieval times. Even after Ghana Empire, Songhai, all of them exited, the Benin Kingdom existed on its own until its conquest in 1897. Today you are seeing all these things, a kingdom that expanded up to Dahomey has now been pocketed and emasculated to be where it is and of course it is still undergoing a lot of dominance and subjugation even within the confines of our geographical expression, Nigeria.
The post ‘I will propagate, project Edo South like never before if…’ appeared first on Daily Independent, Nigerian Newspaper.