PDP crisis: APC ready to take over Edo, says chairman

The Edo State chairman of the All Progressives Congress, Col. David Imuse (retd.), has said his party will capitalise on the disarray in the state Peoples Democratic Party to take over power in the state.

While describing the problem facing the PDP in the state as self-inflicted, Imuse told journalists yesterday that his party was not bothered as they knew what would happen when Governor Godwin Obaseki defected to the PDP after he was denied a second term ticket by the APC.

He said: “It is clear that the PDP is in disarray. It is a self-inflicted injury. We told the whole world that Obaseki and his co-travellers are pollutants and irritants. And wherever they go to, they represent ingratitude. I am not ready to dwell on their problem. So, how they wriggle out of the problem, is there problem.

“The Edo APC is very well-organised. Those causing problems left on their own volition and they are now trying to destroy the party sheltering them and I wish them good luck. We are fully settled, our structures are in place from the state, wards and to the units. We are prepared and ready to take back the governance of the state,” he added.

Speaking about the APC’s plans for the House of Assembly, Reps and Senate elections next year, Imuse stated that the APC is poised to dominate the elections and emerge better as a party.

He said: “Our people came out, supported the APC and we won all the House of Assembly seats, but unfortunately for our people, they have been denied representation, so no one is happy. So, the 2023 general election is when Edo people have to tell Obaseki and those he is supporting that they are not needed. The handwriting is clear, come 2023, the APC will emerge victorious.

“You can see that people are jostling for various positions on our party platform. It shows the viability and acceptability of the APC in Edo State. That is why everyone wants to identify with us and contest elections. They know Edo is APC and APC is Edo. It is a good omen for our party, the more the merrier. We have always had rancour free primaries in the past. The same will play out in the next primaries and we will come out victorious in the state elections.”

He added: “The PDP Chairman, Senator Iyorchia Ayu, recently visited Edo. We are not worried about that but what is worrisome is that a Governor will belittle his office and insult the national chairman of a party by bringing him to come and commission a jetty for canoes and motor park by Oba Market, while his mates are commissioning heavy development projects.

“To me, it shows that the Governor has run out of ideas completely. What we have in the Government House is a political jester who has nothing to offer Edo people. The commissioning he brought the PDP chairman to do is a job meant for a local government chairman.”

When asked if the APC should not take the blame for Obaseki’s emergence as the state governor, he said: “There is no way to find the construction of a man’s heart in his face. Obaseki was able to deceive some members of the APC and we worked for him to become the governor of the state with an agenda of the party.

“But immediately he became governor, he jettisoned the idea the party stood for and that is why the party refused him the second term ticket. We all saw what his predecessors, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole did. He constructed roads, schools and other infrastructures and we thought whoever comes in will continue from there,” he added.