As the September 19 governorship election in Edo State draws near, a chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has advanced reasons why the incumbent governor and the flag bearer of the PDP, Godwin Obaseki, will not have his support for the race.
Speaking exclusively in a telephone interview weekend, the former Commissioner in Edo State, Kassim Afegbua, said his reason to withdraw support from Obaseki for the governorship election was borne out of injustice and illegality by the leadership of the PDP, which led to the surrendering of the party’s structure to Obaseki.
“It is utterly wrong for a party to surreptitiously surrender its privileges and structures to a new entrant as though there were no persons in the party. Within 24 hours, scheduled primary elections were postponed, and all processes leading to the scheduled event were disrupted.
“If the urge was dictated by altruistic intention to feature Godwin Obaseki on account of strong and result-driven leadership, or performance, one could have understood.
“But, anywhere I turned, the motivation was that Godwin Obaseki has state funds to fund the campaigns. Should that be a selling point if truly we are serious-minded opposition?”
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Afegbua recollected that only three months ago, the state chapter of the PDP criticised Obaseki’s lacklustre leadership in the state, and “scored him F9 in all the critical sectors of the Edo economy; health, education, human capital development, infrastructure, and economy.
“The party mocked his job creation initiative that had yielded no positive result other than recruiting his driver and a few domestic staff. We raised queries about his style of governance that dwells so much on Memorandum of Understanding without concrete implementation.
“In 2017, I wrote eloquently about the plans of the government based on those espoused ideas, but three years later, they remain a pipe dream, yet, you still want me to support such a leadership because he was gifted the party’s ticket? My conscience bleeds.”
Afebgua, spokesman of the former Military Head of state, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, questioned what could have changed from the abysmal scorecard of the Obaseki’s governance barely three months ago.
“I was expecting the PDP to direct Governor Obaseki to join another party, to create a stronger opportunity for the PDP to fly with older, loyal party members, since his exit from the APC will weaken part of its internal structure.
“Instead, the party swallowed all its initial vomit, embellished them in a contradictory and double standard manner, and grabbed Governor Obaseki’s trousers by the pocket. It was dollar rain, but it hurts the very soul of the party.”
