TELL Magazine

May defect to another party.

Following Friday’s disqualification of incumbent governor of Edo State, Godwin Obaseki from participating in the governorship primary election of the ruling All Progressives Progress Congress, APC, the government has enjoined his supporters to remain calm and await further directives. Political watchers believe that the governor may be perfecting plans to leave the party to pitch his tent elsewhere.

There had been speculation over time that the deeply embattled governor was contemplating picking the ticket of the Action Alliance, AA party. Opponents of the governor had challenged him to test his popularity in another party since he boasts that he has done so well and Edo people are clamouring for him to seek re-election instead of doing everything to rock the boat of the party that gave him platform to become governor. Initially, the major opposition party in the state, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, was believed to be the preferred choice of the party but feelers from the party seemed to indicate that many of the members are not favourably disposed to his joining the party thereby making him to be looking in the direction of little known and less popular party like the AA.

Reacting to the development, a statement by Crusoe Osagie, special adviser to the governor on media and communication strategy, said “We wish Oshiomhole luck in his maladministration of the party and trust that the Almighty will help our country to find the path to true liberty, freedom and justice. We call on all party members and the teeming supporters of Governor Obaseki to remain calm and await further directives,” he added.

In an earlier statement, the governor said he would not appeal the outcome of the screening exercise, claiming that his disqualification was unjust. Crusoe described the action of the Governorship Primary Screening Committee of the All Progressives Congress (APC), as “a mockery of the democratic process”.

According to him, “We have watched the mockery of democratic process, which Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, is administering and superintending over in our great party, the All Progressives Congress (APC). It has been an unfortunate, disheartening and dreadful spectacle.
We had initially asserted that going by the open display and enthronement of illegality by one man in the party that comprises several organs and eminent personalities, there is no way that Governor Godwin Obaseki would get a fair assessment in the run-up to the nomination of candidates to fly the flag of the party in the forthcoming Edo gubernatorial election.”

Osagie said, “It is unfortunate that this open show of shame, illegality and travesty of justice is the brand of democracy which Comrade Oshiomhole has reduced the APC into. The situation is quite saddening because this is a party supposedly reputed for change, equity and social justice.
We have therefore decided that it would be effort in futility to appeal whatever the unjust outcome of the evaluation and screening process of the APC will be, especially when Comrade Oshiomhole has declared that he is the Supreme Court and ultimate determiner of the fate and future of our great party.

“We wish Oshiomhole luck in his maladministration of the party and trust that the Almighty will help our country to find the path to true liberty, freedom and justice. We call on all party members and the teeming supporters of Governor Obaseki to remain calm and await further directives”.