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….Vows to Sanction Perpetrators

As the ghost of the defection of Governor Godwin Obaseki of Edo State from his former party, the All Progressives Congress, APC to the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, continues to haunt the former opposition party in the state, leaders of the party in Edo North senatorial district, led by a member of the PDP Board of Trustees, BoT, Raymond Dokpesi, have blamed the crisis rocking the party over issues of harmonisation of party offices, on the failure of the national leadership of the party to originally involve the embattled South-south Zonal Vice-Chairman of the party, Dan Osi Orbih, in the negotiation process.

Recall that the state chapter of the PDP had been hit by internal crisis leading to a controversial suspension of Orbih and some old leaders of the party by their respective senatorial leaderships. The suspensions were to be ratified Monday October 11 in Benin, at an enlarged meeting of leaders of the party in the state drawn from the 192 wards, and presided over by the state governor. Those whose suspensions were ratified were Orbih, Omoregie Ogbeide-Ihama, the member of the House of Representatives representing Oredo Federal Constituency; state secretary of the party, Hilary Otsu; the PDP Chairman in Oredo local government area, Oduwa Igbinosun, and the Chairman of PDP in Oredo Ward Four, Friday Enaruna.

 This was in spite of the stance by the party’s National Working Committee, (NWC) through its spokesman, Kola Ologbodiyan, nullifying the Thursday October 7, 2021 suspensions.   The motion for the ratification of the suspensions was moved by Mike Nosa-Ehima, a leader of the PDP in Oredo local government area.  Nosa-Ehima explained that “all those that have refused to allow the party to grow are being suspended in the interest of the PDP”. Orbih was suspended along with five other LGA chairmen in his Edo North senatorial district, as well as the district’s senatorial leader, Samuel Saiki, and Otsu, the state’s party scribe.

But at Sunday’s meeting held at the country home of Dokpesi in Agenebode, Etsako East local government area of the state, attended by Orbih, the chairman of DAAR Communications Plc, State Working Committee members from the zone, all the local government area and ward chairmen from the zone, as well as two leaders from each ward, the leaders, held their suspension was “illegal, unconstitutional, and is condemned in its entirety”.

Throwing their weight behind Orbih and his co-travelers, they insisted that the crisis tearing the party apart would have been avoided if Orbih was part of the negotiations that brought Obaseki to the party in 2019 when he was shopping for a platform for his re-election when the APC dumped him.

In a communiqué issued at the end of the meeting, signed by the assistant secretary of the PDP in the senatorial district, Baba Sheriff Idenobemhe, it was agreed, amongst others, “That all hands must be on deck to work towards a successful national convention coming up in Abuja in a few weeks; That the purported suspension of the National Vice Chairman, Chief Dan Orbih, the State Secretary, Chief Hillary Otsu; the Senatorial Chairman, Hon. Segun Saiki, and five Chairmen from the zone, is illegal, unconstitutional and is condemned in its entirety; That the perpetrators of the illegal suspension will be identified and disciplinary measures shall be imposed on them.”

The meeting also dismissed on-going harmonisation meetings in some of the local government areas and wards, describing them as illegal.  They noted that “if Chief Dan Orbih was originally involved in the negotiations for Governor Obaseki’s adoption as PDP candidate, the process would have been better managed and the current imbroglio would have been averted.

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