Since former Governor Godwin Obaseki has chosen an inelegant route, choosing to become a fugitive in his own country, he has thrown up several persons who are driving his churlish narratives every time his invidious tenure comes under review. No one is denying him of being the author of the Radisson Hotel, MOWAA or EMOWAA, the sticking point is that the transactions that enabled these projects were replete with financial pollution and opacity. Attracting investors to a state like Edo shouldn’t be rocket science, and the process could have been kept simple and understandable, with transparency, accountability and probity. Why should anyone assemble state resources to carry out state-sponsored projects and somehow along the line, surreptitiously gift the projects over to friends, business associates, economic buccaneers and political predators. Investors should be people who are ready to add value to our economic wellbeing using their own capital; and not those who will use our own resources to fund their business interests. All the so-called state investments of Godwin Obaseki as governor, are curious, deep in opacity, have unclear ownership, and tell of subterfuge, subterranean manipulations, and backdoor hand-over of Edo’s supposed investment.
So, in trying to locate the nexus between promise and performance, in Obaseki’s tenure, we must rationalize his motivation or lack of it. Behind all his so-called investments is a byzantine structure of confusion and manipulation; the reasons are not far-fetched. The due diligence that should have formed the basis for due process, was near absent and proof of funds from these–what we may call impostor investors –was not clearly established. Project ownership structure changed multiple times with alteration after alteration, depending on the mood of Godwin Obaseki:
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