EDO 2024: APC Remains The Party To Beat

BY KASSIM AFEGBUA

Each time we read weather-beaten rhetorics from Governor Obaseki’s gory quarters, tailored by his uncultured vuvuzellas, we feel the palpable bested and supine posture suffusing the souls of the current occupants of Osadebe Avenue; merely aspirating, and frenetically seeking even a silver lining for their validation.

From a turncoat wannabe called “Reverend” Olu Martins, who was caught on tape threatening bloodletting, to another paralytically depressing spokesperson of the current government that has crippled the vertebrae of Edo’s political economy, all that they exude is debauchery; that has become the second nature of the Obaseki-led government.

On setting eyes on Crusoe Osagie, one is immediately smacked by evocations of the speciousness of the government in which he serves: tacky, scruffy, uncoordinated, obliviously remiss, venal, roguish, and demagogue infested. Those people need urgent rehabilitation. His boss, Governor Obaseki has become another conquistador, quite a semblance of Hernan Cortes, and has failed to learn the lessons of power.

Crusoe’s verbiage each time he is faced with truth, exposes his dim wit, short fuse and delusion. If Governor Obaseki’s economic policies were working, a spokesman in such dictatorship ought to be canonical in content and august among the citizens; instead his appearance is repulsive and odious.

Crusoe needs rehabilitation; he needs it urgently too; lest we should summarily match him with Obaseki’s pothole infested roads or any other thing of dread.

The APC as a political party is not, by any rubric afraid of a beleaguered political amalgam of the PDP’s emanation. The PDP has killed and buried herself. Beyond remiss and abdication of her responsibilities at home, she is engulfed in copious litigations because of the shoddy primary elections that produced her candidate, and other offenses.

Everything we do and say apropos of the PDP is in trying to ensure that we break the artifice and cunning they hold over our people and state. Furthermore, the party is not only fractured into several groups, in its cacophony and discord, there is an across the board bereftness of ideas. They are simply mercenary in wanting to occupy Osadebe Avenue- it’s all motivated by personal gains, individually and collectively.

Mutual suspicion has been her article of fate as they all slalom around their self inflicted obstacles every now and then.

Governor Obaseki and his minions and lackeys, and the other groups should by now realise that the game is up, despite and in spite of their daredevil desire to manipulate the process. They must go; they have had capacious room to shape up over the years but failed abysmally. If the government’s vuvuzellas are not aware, it bears repeating to drum it loud and clear that Governor Obaseki and his men have lost it completely; and we will make sure that this message is reverberated all across the land.

Is Crusoe not aware that members of Governor Obaseki’s family have publicly endorsed Senator Okpebholo and went further to apologize for the misdemeanors of their son?

The Enigies and Ohens have also endorsed our candidate.

The Farmers Association of Nigeria, Edo State chapter have also endorsed our candidate, ditto for over ten thousand clerics and Edo State professionals and entrepreneurs.

Also, we have received endorsements from different groups of artisans, members of the academia, and titled men and women drawn from all parts of the state. We are proud to represent the new Edo narrative; a narrative that espouses honesty, probity and good faith; one that will exist and persist with a determination for a productive and beneficial governance.

Edo people are in agreement that “Edo no be Lagos”; hence, the effort to implant another cowboy from Lagos is dead on arrival. We know Governor Obaseki’s pranks and subterfuge. We are aware of how he has been harbouring alleged criminals and murderers inside the Government House, and preventing them from facing the full wrath of the law; including some individuals wanted over the gruesome murder of Inspector Onu Akor. All those who have a hand in that dastardly act should in bravado come out from their hiding places, deluded by the reverie of the carapace their boss has assured them of.

There is no hiding place for the wicked and baneful; rather than rushing to court to seek an injunction, these wanted ones should just walk to the nearest Police Station to report themselves, they have no other option.

Governor Obaseki has since gone crooked, and multifarious ills like kidnapping are still burgeoning with celerity in Edo State despite all the pussyfooting claims about one amorphous security outfit named Edo Security Network- the deadly killer squad that Governor Obaseki created to work on the situation. We know the gambit; Obaseki means to deploy them for his selfish motive during the election.

By raising an alarm to the relevant security agencies, and the world we are declaring our resolve to uphold and safeguard a peaceful electoral process. None of our actions is based on fear of the PDP. It may be based on the fear for our people. Nobody has monopoly of violence. Our people say “you can only boast of the size of your farm, when you have not visited another’s farm.” We have capacity to look at Obaseki’s killer squad, eyeball to eyeball, and match them toe to toe and whimper for whimper as we trust in the nimbleness and legerity of the State Security Services.

For the umpteenth time, we are calling on the Inspector General of Police, and other security agencies to disband this Governor Obaseki’s killer squad urgently, to avert a breakdown of law and order. We love Edo state and are stakeholders here; we are not like those who are predatory in their relations with the state.