By Owen Eresoyen, Benin
24 members of the All Progressives Congress(APC) in the Transition Committee on the change of government from the People’s Democratic Party(PDP) in the incoming administration in Edo State, have explained what stopped them from honouring the call for a meeting on the second day of the planned gathering between them and the government team.
Speaking through Hon. Patrick Ikhariale, Secretary of the Committee, the APC team while responding to enquiries on why they were absent from the second day meeting scheduled for Tuesday morning said: “While not trying to impugn on your character or trying to challenge your position I don’t think any rational person will discuss or mention the fact that we didn’t come today because of allowance matter. That’s not on the table. It has never been on the table anywhere.
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“The truth remains that we have had series of communications both oral and written. Some of them are well documented. No meeting could have been proposed for today because in our letters to them we have insisted that anything we want to do they must send to us advance copies of whatever we want to do 24 hours before the meeting.
“Be that as it may, we made requisitions yesterday that all the documents they have supplied so far do not meet our expectations because we asked certain specific questions or required certain documents that are to give us enough understanding of certain things. At the end of the day, it was like they were going to change their approach because it is obvious that whatever they brought to us would have been written well ahead of the transition committee. And whatever we are asking of is in line with best standard practice globally. We’re not asking of anything new; no rocket science about it.”
According to Hon. Ikhariale: “It is a question of asking questions in some cases relating to some monetary issues, expenditure, what’s left here, what has been done, may be grants, NGOs and what. There are so many others. We have twenty three areas of interest which we forwarded.
“What has been supplied to us so far to the best of our knowledge and what we can readily see here is showcasing “the achievement of the Obaseki regime for the number of years that they have stayed in government.
“That’s not the focus of the request we made. There’s no doubt that the submission they have made so far falls short of what we expected. We’re forwarding a letter to them giving them time that anytime they’re able to forward the expected document we have the joint meeting and interaction.”