APC Kicks As Obaseki Replaces Missing Commissioner

Governor Godwin Obaseki has been asked by the APC to offer an explanation on the whereabouts of Mr. Osaze Ero-Osemwingie, the Edo Commissioner for Arts, Culture, and Tourism who was allegedly arrested last year in France.

The party made this challenge on Wednesday following what it described as the Governor’s quiet replacement of the remanded Commissioner with the swearing-in of Mr. Lawrence Ogieva as the new Commissioner for Arts, Culture, and Diaspora Affairs.

In a statement by Mr. John Mayaki, the Chairman of the APC Media Campaign Council, the party accused Governor Godwin Obaseki of attempting to sweep the scandal under the carpet despite alleged confessions that Mr. Osaze Ero-Osemwingie was running errands for the Governor in Europe before he was arrested by INTERPOL with an unexplained two million dollars.

Mayaki said Governor Godwin Obaseki’s official silence on the matter is suspicious and conspiratorial. He demanded a full explanation of the source of the two million dollars Ero-Osemwingie was allegedly caught with and the nature of the errands he was running for the state government before his arrest in Europe.

 He added that the swearing-in of the new Commissioners is unknown to law, as they were presented before an illegal Assembly, and demanded that the Ministry of Arts, Culture, and Diaspora Affairs be subjected to a thorough, independent investigation by the EFCC to ascertain the involvement of the state government in the arrested Commissioner’s money laundering scheme and whether the alleged crime was state-sanctioned with the Ministry used as a cover.

 The statement read: “At the fall of last year, before the rage of Covid-19 pandemic, Governor Obaseki’s Commissioner for Arts, Culture, and Diaspora Affairs, Osemwingie Ero, left the shores of Nigeria to, according his own words, ‘run errands for the government.’ But for over 9 months now he has not returned having been arrested in France with an unexplained two million dollars and jailed on the charges of money laundering.”

 “However, in a fresh development, Governor Obaseki on 25th August, illegally swore-in alongside other persons, Lawrence Ogieva as the new Commissioner for Arts, Culture, and Diaspora Affair after months of suspicious and conspiratorial silence as if the image-denting arrest of Osemwingie Ero never occurred. “

 “There are several questions begging for answers and the people of Edo State, and the family of the arrested Commissioner, are by the dictates of the constitution and democracy which compel every election government to be accountable to the people, entitled to hear the answers to the questions from no other person than Mr. Godwin Obaseki himself.”

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