By Erasmus I. Benin.
The history of how Obaseki downgraded APC in Edo State and came to join PDP using fringe members of the party based in Abuja is no secret, so there is no need recalling that sad part of history.
The unsuspecting members of the public and the party wholeheartedly embraced him and his propaganda against Comrade Oshiomhole with the feeling that Oshiomhole, not him, was the villain in the deadly eruption of acrimony in APC
That development saw two factions emerge: EMP and OSM, the same bitter far-flung factions that have emerged in PDP, thanks to the infectious ingenuity of Mr. Obaseki, and his faction has vowed to fight to finish with the Legacy PDP they came to meet in the party, that gave him succor.
As for me, I do not wish anyone to be persuaded to join any of the factions especially as a member of the old PDP. Forget Senator Mathew Urhoghide hobnobbing with Obaseki because he was promised to be made the governor of Edo State, or returned to the senate come 2023.
Talking from both sides of the mouth and betraying the Oredo people. All you need to do is look at what has been transpiring in the party since he decamped, throughout the campaigns, and how he has treated members of our team within the party and use your conscience to judge.
Yes, the names of some of our leaders will come up as professional propaganda as a way to distract attention, don’t fall for those wiles, just judge if you as a person have been fairly treated in the party you helped to nurture since 2007 when it was defeated.
You had the opportunity to defect to APC, you didn’t because you feel that one day when the Party wins, you will have a say in it. Today, your party is in power, you are not in government because they said you must harmonize or integrate when they have not shown any love, compassion, or appreciation for your industry during the election that brought them to power.
They have taken everything in government, and they want to use crumbs to negotiate away your position in the excess that was there before his election.
Some weeks ago, Dr. J.Y. Musa, SAN, a lawyer to some elected officials of the Party in Edo State in a letter to the Acting National Chairman warned that continuing with the harmonization by the Edo State Government would amount to criminal contempt with its grave consequences on all concerned.
Even with the warnings and earlier letters from the NWC, Obaseki and his people are hell-bent on illegal harmonization. They said they have achieved it in Esan and are moving to Owan to continue what is not known to law.
And just this past week, a notable member of the party, one Mr. Etinosa left the party for reasons of conscience, and we cannot feign ignorance of the reasons why he left even when members of the new PDP are ready to bite off his head without knowing him and what he did to help make Obaseki win.
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It is on record that when the new PDP came in, whenever there are general meetings in the party, they hold their separate ‘special’ meetings first. They hatch plans as they never were internally integrated but go on to deceive the public that they want harmonization and that the old PDP members don’t want it. In one of such meetings, it was said that the new commissioner of Justice, Bar. Iyamu said he had told the governor to remove the State Party Chairman, Dr. Tony Aziegbemi because he was not doing the bidding of the governor in all his illegal requests.
You will wonder how and why a SAN can ask the governor to be committed to illegality, the Attorney General of the State for that matter who should be able to tell the governor about the implications of his illegalities.
In other meetings, it was said that the plan was to make one Mr. Asuen or any of the governor’s men who will be able to cover his tracks, who will be willing to do his bidding and also help his men into government, as the next governor come 2024. It was also said in some of the secret meetings that the idea behind the illegal harmonization is to present aspirants vying for elective positions by the new PDP anywhere the Legacy PDP members present their own through the blessings of the legal excos assuming the law concerning direct primaries does not scale through.
It was said that the highest the Legacy PDP members can do in this instance will be to go to court as the governor will use his powers of incumbency to make sure his new PDP members are forcefully elected since they do not have the required numbers to win popular primary elections within the Party, and since the governor has lost the goodwill of the people who voted for him.
As it was forewarned by Dr. Musa, SAN, the consequence of these planned actions by the governor through this illegal harmonization would be for Edo State to go the Zamfara ways, which the governor would not mind since he knows how to fight to finish and destroy.
The tragedy of beating up the 80-year-old elderly Party man was not a matter of isolation; it was meant to show what the new PDP is capable of doing. Recently, in a shared interview of Hon. Adjoto, the governor’s hatchet man in Akoko-Edo, was accused of being complicit in the sorry attack that shock the world because he was the one that went to Akoko-Edo with the illegal harmonization, said a committee was set up over the matter.
The question he should have been asked is how do you set up a committee to look into a matter that was videoed with the accomplices openly seen? Who are the members of the committee set up? Who set up the committee and what have been their findings so far? Over a month after the incident happened, are there arrest made so far?
Governor Obaseki cannot decide who becomes whatever come 2023 and 2024 in Edo State PDP. The people will decide. No single individual decided how he became governor in 2020, it was the decision of the entire people of Edo State as they kicked against Godfatherism which Adams Oshiomhole wanted to institute.
he plans it’s he plans to Destabilize PDP that gave him a platform to run, history will judge him accordingly. The Legacy PDP members will not however sit idle and watch him destroy the party, all legal means to stop him will be activated.
