A governorship aspirant in Edo on the platform of the Labour Party, Ogbemudia Bassey Osagie, has blamed the rising cases of cult violence in the state on poverty and the presence of cult members in government.
He, therefore, assured that if elected as governor, he would use employment generation to stop cult-related killings in the state.
Osagie stated this in Benin City when he met with the leaders of the LP in Oredo Local Government Area, where he also accused the state government of not coming clean with the people on the state of roads.
According to him, “Behind every crime, there is a social underpinning. The young people today are killing themselves through cultism, they are doing that because they have no hope, they have no education, they have no training, and our law enforcement agencies are not doing their jobs. The government is not doing its bit. But what I will do as governor is to start from the basics which is to educate our young people; change our curriculum to make sure that education is not just about knowledge, it is about providing tools and empowerment for our youths so that they learn vocation then we can grow back our middle class.
“Cultism is a social issue in our society and there is cultism in the Government House, in the House of Assembly, in our local government councils, in every aspect of our lives. Edo State is not the only state we have cultists, how come this is the only state where they are killing each other?
“It is because our youths don’t have hope. They are jobless; 40 percent of our youths are unemployed and this is unacceptable, four in every ten Edo people is in poverty that has to stop,” he reiterated.
On roads, he said; “If federal roads are the issues, how come all the state roads are not tarred? That is what I am asking. The government of the day is just lying to the people. If they say the bad roads are federal roads and the federal government doesn’t want them to fix them, then all the state roads should be fixed”.
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