INTERVIEW: Ize-Iyamu Speaks On Edo Assembly Saga, Says Obaseki Is Already Wounded

Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu, the governorship candidate of the All Progressive Congress (APC) in Edo State, in this interview after being endorsed by President Muhammadu Buhari, on Friday spoke on wide-ranged issues as its affects the September 19 governorship election in the state including the crisis currently rocking the Edo State House of Assembly.

BIGPEN team produced the excerpt of the interview below:

Are you worried that the graft charges against you and the terrible things said about you in the past by Oshiomhole will work against you in Edo election?

I’m not worried. In the heat of politics we tend to say a lot of things. Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, who said those things then has also explained the circumstances under which he said it, which is that he had to de-market me to market his product. That he didn’t have much to say about his product and so the only thing that he had to do was to see how much he could de-market me. He has even gone ahead to apologize that most of the things he said, for example that I am not a lawyer, he has realize is not true, that I am not a pastor he has realize is not true. He has apologized and moved on.

I want to assure you that our support base is increasing by the day, we had 14 members House of Assembly before out of 24 but I’m sure you saw yesterday (Thursday) that they are now 17 and the Governor is left with just seven.

I must also say that in Edo State House of Assembly where you have 24 members, to even be able to form a quorum, you need eight members. But today, the group with the Governor cannot even seat because they cannot even form a quorum. But even two third, which is needed to pass budget is 16 and we already have 17 and more are coming. So the support base for APC is strong and increasing by the day.

We have just been told that you are a grassroots politician but the face of your campaign is Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, why?

Let me first inform you that Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, is not the face of the campaign. As you rightly know, I am the gubernatorial candidate and Mallam Gani Audu is the deputy.
It is the PDP that keeps mentioning his name, talking about him and playing tapes as if he is the candidate. But I want to inform you that I am very well known in Edo. I have lived there all my life, I have been chief of staff, secretary to the state government and we also have a local Director-General of the campaign, Gen. Cecil Esekhaigbe (retd.) from a Edo Central, who is well respected. And of course the National have also established a local council headed by no less a person than the governor of Kano. So we are very strong and we are doing well.

Of course, Adams Oshiomhole comes from Edo, he is an APC member and it is natural for him to campaign for our party but certainly he is not the face. Unlike what happened four years ago where maybe, the candidate could not speak and somebody had to speak for him. But anyone will tell you that everywhere I have gone, I have been the one speaking. So that statement is not correct.

As a lawyer, will you not see yourself as condoning illegality for supporting what took place outside the House of Assembly hallow Chambers and holding in your parlour?

On the question of the House of Assembly, let me quickly debunked what you said, nothing was done in my sitting room. So that statement is false and there is no truth in it.
Number two, it is not I or the APC that is condoning illegality, I think it is Obaseki that has been condoning illegality. Because, for over a year, he was running a house that was not properly constituted. I’m sure all of you know that whereas we had 24 members in the house, just because he wasn’t sure he could have his way, he invited those nine members and inaugurated them at 9:49pm at night. If you see the video clip, you will see that even one of them wore knicker to a ceremony that was as formal as their inauguration. There is a code of dressing to the House of Assembly, but on the day they were inaugurated, one of them had on knicker, that will tell you the haste of illegality that was involved. Since that time several attempts have been made to talk to the governor to ensure that these constituencies that were deprived, 14 of them who fortunately were all elected on the platform of the APC. The House was 100 percent APC, 24 members elected for the APC and the governor chose to ensure that 14 of them were short out of the house. That means 14 constituencies including that of the governor, Oredo had no representative in the house.

One day, the purported speaker woke up and said he had declared their seats vacant but even they themselves never believed it. I will you that a week before the governor left the party, he held a meeting with the 14 people that they said are no longer members of the house, inviting them as members elect and asking for a truce so that they can come back to the House. So the reality is that, we all know that declaring their seats vacant was not valid. And for your information, it is not the venue that legitimises parliamentary sessions, the members and the symbol of authority the maze, once it is in place, they can seat anywhere, they can deliberate and there are many examples to that effect.

So what you saw yesterday is that the governor left the executive arm and invaded the legislative arm and took control. There is clear separation of powers. You have three governors here and in their state, the house of assembly is autonomous. You don’t see the governors going there to go and operate. But the governor of Edo and deputy, took over the house of assembly and vandalized the place, they said they are renovating it. Ask them, the budget that they passed including the revised one, is there a provision for the renovation of the house of Assembly? There is none. So, if there is no such provision, how can you begin to remove the roof during raining season if not because you have sinister motives.
So that will tell you that, all what they were trying to do was to truncate legislative arm and stop them from sitting. So if anyone was doing a coup, they were the ones doing a coup against the legislative arm of government yesterday. And we are happy that our people have risen to it. Are you going to compare seven people to 17? In a legislative arrangement, seven people will want to lord it over 17 people? That is an aberration. I have told you that even to form a quorum you need eight, they don’t even have eight members. Two third is 16 and these people have 17, so clearly what has been done yesterday is a triumph for democracy. And we are happy that we have made it clear that APC is in charge of Edo State. The Governor has temporarily carried the executive arm to the PDP, but the legislative arm is fully for APC and that we have shown yesterday. Are you saying I shouldn’t congratulate my party for doing the right thing?
So on this forum, let me again congratulate the new speaker of the house of assembly, Hon. Victor Edoror and pray that God will use him to bring stability and development to our state.

INEC has raised some fears about the possible conduct of that election given the signs of violence between your camp and that of Obaseki. Are you not worried that because of this the forthcoming election is doomed?

On the issue of violence that you mentioned, if you ask your correspondents in Edo, it is the governor that has been beating the war drums. My billboards are being vandalized, nobody has touched their own. We wrote petitions to the commissioner of police, the Director DSS and they will attest to the fact that on a regular basis they are destroying our Billboards. They are the ones that want to make the state ungovernable and I am sure you heard the governor say that himself and his deputy have immunity and so they can deal with anybody.
I don’t have immunity, I don’t want to go to jail and it is not in my character to deal with anyone. They did their flag off at the stadium, nobody molested them. This morning I placed a call to the DSS director to tell him that I am aware that the deputy governor has sent money to the student union leaders, appealing to them to come and demonstrate at Ugbowo, which is the route we are taking to our flag off tomorrow (Saturday). Of course the boys were just looking at him and informed us.
So we are not beating any war drum, we believe in peace, our president believes in peace, our party leaders believe in peace and we cannot disappoint them.

So I can assure you that on our part, we will conduct ourselves in a peaceful manner, our campaign will be done peacefully, the elections by the grace of God will be done peaceful. We are only appealing to the PDP and the governor to do the same.

How do you now feel having been endorsed by the president and meeting him for the first time?

I want to express my gratitude to the party leadership and of course Mr. President for the reception I got this morning, very warm, very fatherly. And let me also use this opportunity to debunk the story that has been going in the past one week from the opposition that Mr. President did not want to see me. There is no truth in it. Our party is very organized and from day one, the leadership told me before the flag off we will take you to see the president. And it was only some days ago they told me, you will see the president on Friday since the flag off is on Saturday. There was no appointment that was arranged before that did not work. They arranged it when they wanted to arrange it and I am very satisfied with all the arrangement they have put in place.

The cooperation I have received is unprecedented, all the governors are practically calling and seeing how they can support and I am happy to belong to the progressive family. And I want to assure you that we will win overwhelmingly. The president gave me this flag and like I said, today is a very rare privilege because under normal circumstances, it is the national chairman that gives the flag but I think the president wanted to demonstrate his love for me and because of that he decided to personally take the flag from the national chairman and gave it to me. So please, help me thank the president.