Edo State Governor Godwin Obaseki will not submit himself to the All Progressives Congress, APC governorship primaries slated for June 21.
If the embattled governor, who’s s currently in a fierce battle with his predecessor and National Chairman of the APC, Adams Oshiomhole over who represents the party in the September governorship election succumbed to pressure to participate in the direct primaries, he could as well bid his ambition to rule the state for another four years good bye, analysts say.
The National Working Committee, NWC of the party has decided to hold a direct primary to choose the party’s candidate for the election coming up later next month.
But Governor Obaseki prefers an indirect primary where the state chapter of the party will indirectly chose the party’s candidate.
The governor has now made it clear that it’s either he had his way or nothing at all.
Governor Obaseki in a statement by his Special Adviser on Media and Strategy, Crusoe Osagie said the decision on what type of primaries to adopt should not be the preserve of the APC National Chairman alone.
According to him, that decision can only be taken by the National Executive Committee, NEC, which he said has not met to decide on the matter.
Referring to the report where the NWC took the decision to conduct a direct primary in the state, Governor Obaseki said, “That report was a scoop, there was no meeting of the NWC in which the decision was taken. If the Oshiomhole camp is having it at the back of their minds that it is what they want to do, they don’t have the power to do that.”
He cited two states where the APC NEC decided on such matter adding that Oshiomhole cannot change the rule in the case of Edo.
He said “The power to direct what kind of primary to do rests on NEC and NEC at the last meeting decided that because of the dissenting voices, all modes of primary should be decided by the different state chapters as it was done in Kogi and Bayelsa.
In Kogi, for example, they determined the kind of primary they wanted, and in Bayelsa, the same thing happened.
So, in Edo, the same method will be adopted, according to the rules of NEC. We will now write the NWC to say this is the mode of primary that we want.”
But a faction of the party loyal to the National Chairman said on Friday that the direct primary must go ahead, it also accused the state’s helmsman of diabolical plot to scuttle the plan of the party’s leadership to conduct a hitch-free primary by raising a false alarm over the Corona virus pandemic.
Lawrence Okah, the Secretary of Edo APC loyal to Oshiomhole , in a letter addressed to the INEC Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, alleged that Obaseki had ordered the testing of “fictitious”300,000 persons for COVID-19 to announce fake positive results to use the development to scuttle the June 22 primary.
“It has come to our notice that the Governor of Edo State, Godwin Obaseki, has concluded plans to scuttle the primary election of the All Progressives Congress scheduled to hold on June 22. The pretext is that if held, the primary election will escalate cases of COVID-19 in Edo,” Okah said.
Meanwhile, a former chairman of the party, Chief Odigie Oyegun has pleaded with the party to grant automatic tickets to Obaseki and Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo as APC governorship candidates in the September election.
The Ondo state helmsman is also faced with a groundswell of opposition over his ambition to rule the state again.
