Edo Tensions Rise: APC Vows Retaliation Against PDP After Alleged Attack on Members

In an ominous sign of imminent large-scale political violence in Edo State with barely two weeks to the governorship election in the state, the All-Progressives Congress, APC has threatened that it might resort to self-help, if the ruling People’s Democratic Party, PDP did not stop the “trajectory of violence” on its members and supporters. The APC warned that the PDP might compel it “to look eyeball to eyeball with those who think violence and gangsterism are their stock in trade”.

The party, in a statement on Monday by the Director of Media of the APC Governorship Campaign Council, Prince Kassim Afegbua, therefore said that it was giving the last warning to the PDP to call Governor Obaseki’s boys to order “because our response level cannot be contained when we resort to self-help”.

Afegbua, in the statement entitled ‘Propaganda Distribution Party: PeeDeePee, warn your Tigers and Lions’, posited that “We have restrained our party members from getting involved in any act of violence during and after this election season, but the desperation of the PDP is inextricably dragging us on the path that would compel us to seek self-help. This latter option we’ve resisted because we love Edo people, no matter their political affiliations, but a continuation of this trajectory of violence might force us to look eyeball to eyeball with those who think violence and gangsterism are their stock in trade”.

According to the APC campaign council spokesperson, “The rate at which propaganda has swallowed the PDP in Edo State in this campaign season is quite alarming. They brought in some hackers, spinners, hirelings and cloners to town, in order to twist narratives to suit their bulbous ego, trying as it were, with vaunted hoopla, to confuse Edo voters. Two incidents happened in Edo North campaigns of the APC, and the report we saw scripted by the PeeDeePee goons were most confounding.

“At Ososo campaigns in Akoko-Edo Local Government Area, APC had a very successful campaign with huge turn-out to the consternation of the PeeDeePee, and as we were departing the community, some rag-tag thugs, ostensibly supporters of the PeeDeePee, wanted to disrupt the flow of our convoy. Thank God for our security operatives who were able to restore normalcy. We are of the strong belief that no blood of any Edo person is worth letting in the name of Election. The story that PeeDeePeè goons and urchins put out there was a direct opposite of what transpired.

“At Ekperi, in Etsako Central Local Government, we also had a robust engagement with our supporters during the campaigns. When we were done, on our way to Fugar, the Local Government headquarters, some PDP street urchins and thugs tried to disrupt our convoy again, this time, shot at our candidate’s vehicle. Thanks again to the security operatives that accompanied us for the campaign exercise. They were able to arrest the ugly situation”.

Afegbua was miffed that “When PeeDeePee hirelings and coupon clippers and rentiers reported the incident, it was twisted to show that we were chased out of Ekperi. Even the PDP chieftain from Ekperi, Barrister Pascal Ugbome, knows that Ekperi is the home of APC, and the PDP would be beaten flat in that locality and the entire Etsako Land”.

Wondering why the PDP should think that electoral engagements “must flow from the corpus of bloodletting and violence”, he said when the PDP would attack the APC Campaign train, “they will quickly rush to make twisted reports as though we are the ones attacking ourselves; such a curious dysfunctionality and twisted logic, adding that “This statement is to give the last warning to the PDP to call Governor Obaseki’s boys to order because our response level cannot be contained when we resort to self-help. A word is enough for the wise”.