Isibor Lawrence
It was a very combustible atmosphere today in the government house when the embattled Edo State Governor, Godwin Obaseki, met with some former LGA chairmen. The meeting was initiated with the assistance of the commissioner for LGA affairs, Hon. Osaigbovo.
The governor told the former LGA chairmen to do everything within their powers to make sure PDP candidates win the House of Assembly elections slated for 11th March. In their varied responses, in the presence of the Secretary to the State Government, Bar. Osarodion Ogie, and other government officials, some of the former council chairmen told the governor their minds without mincing words. They told him they were not happy with the way he was handling the affairs of the state including the way he treated members of the PDP who accommodated them when they all left APC. They said he would have been diplomatic in dealing with the old members of the PDP and the leadership of the party.
The former council chairmen who served under him in the last dispensation also reminded him in strong words that he wanted to rope them in financial crimes after they left office by telling the public that they plundered council funds and will be probed. The said they recall how what every council owed was published in some newspapers. They said they were able to get out of the mess when they gave full accounts of how the government through the Secretary to the State Government, Ogie, was coming to ask for remittance of funds to the state government, which made the government to stop the attempted probe.
According to the reliable source who was present but name withheld, what was supposed to be a meeting of appeasement alleged turned into a combative one. The embattled governor said he is always being blamed for everything that has happened in the state and the party. He informed those present that he is tired of the whole issue and whatever happens in the 11th election should happen, heavens won’t fall. The LGA chairmen told him in very lacerating words that the problem of salvaging the party was beyond redemption as begging the people who had already made up their minds to vote against the PDP candidates cannot be reversed. All efforts to bring back the bitter governor who stormed out of the meeting in roar of anger proved abortive.
Conspicuously absent was the Akoko-Edo LGA ex-chairman, Hon. Don Umori, who died last year after a brief illness.
