BENIN – Comrade Adams Oshiom­hole, former governor of Edo state weekend declared that his suc­cessor, Governor Godwin Oba­saki does not have the power to order his arrest or the arrest of any citizen.

Oshiomhole made the decla­ration while reacting to a state­ment from the state government that the governor had ordered the arrest of the immediate-past National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC) for allegedly instigating the protest over the scarcity of the new nai­ra and the rejection of old notes by traders.

Oshiomhole, while address­ing newsmen in Benin, said Obaseki did not know that he lacked the power to order the arrest of a citizen and that was the reason some people had been having reservations when peo­ple like Obaseki talked about State Police.

According to him, the law is very clear on it that if a crime has been committed, it is up to the security agencies to inves­tigate and if they find someone who they think may have had the need to invite, the person is invited for questioning.

“The police have not and I will be surprised if they have now de­generated to taking orders from a politician who is faced with the crisis of confidence and the people have been voting against him.

“There are huge issues of the legitimacy of his govern­ment and he thinks that he can order police to arrest whoever he considers to be his political opponent.

“So, it is unfortunate, but I thought that you media people would have asked him and if you did not remember it is not too late to ask him, ‘Mr. Gover­nor, so Comrade also caused the riot in Warri where Okowa is the sitting governor; Comrade also caused the riot in Ibadan, Oyo State; Oshiomhole also went to Kwara State to organise protest in an APC state?’

“If you did not ask him, may­be you had your reason.

“But, let me say that Obaseki is a victim of his own double standard. He says one thing in the morning; he does another the following day.

“I think Obaseki, after embar­rassing the Central Bank Gover­nor, Emefiele, when he accused him sometime last year or the year before of printing hundreds of billions of naira to share for states by way of Federation Account, and that Emefiele’s policies are going to destroy the naira even as he admitted that the money was being shared to state governments.

“After his initial reaction, I think he realized that the elec­tion is coming. Obaseki needs cash and who will give him this cash, oh yes, the person who has given him before, he took over N20 billion from the Central Bank in the name of agriculture.

“You as journalists ask Obaseki to show you where the farms are. He has taken those money and converted them for other purposes and of course he is obliged to refund those money and so he has to do things, this time, to look as if he is sudden­ly a man who has been abusing Federal Government, abusing Buhari, abusing anything feder­al, suddenly, decided that a policy that I have denounced even as former chairman of APC and I did not denounce it secretly, I denounced it on Channel Tele­vision.

“In the course of campaign­ing ,when I hear people com­plain to me about the challenges they had. I have never hesitated in denouncing it and I will con­tinue to denounce it because it is not the policy of APC and I can’t be afraid to say the truth.

“So, Obaseki wanting to make money out of this hardship, sud­denly became pro CBN Gover­nor, defending anti-people policy, where your people are groaning and he has made the wrong as­sumption that Edo people do not know their right from their left.

“After all, it is part of his misdemeanor and MoU and all the other stuff that he used to divert people’s attention which they are manifesting now and even degenerating to a level like a mad man trying to re-loot the artefacts that the Oba of Benin has been struggling for years to have repatriated to Edo State, back to the palace where they were looted many years ago,” he alleged.

The APC senatorial candi­date for Edo North in the forth­coming election, also charged the media to play their role by interrogating those making al­legations.