Edo 2020: APC denies any agreement with Tinubu

The All Progressives Congress (APC) in Edo State has denied having any agreement with the party’s national elader, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, saying agitating that wild allegations won’t save incumbent Governor Godwin Obaseki from thumping defeat on Saturday.

APC in a statement by Chairman of the Edo State APC Media Campaign Council, John Mayaki, emphasized that such “wild panic, expressed as wild accusations, only reflected PDP’s wild trouble, over sure and crushing defeat.”

Mayaki noted that the State Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Chris Nehikhare, had in a media release, accused APC chieftain, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, of allegedly planning to fly in money from Lagos, to allegedly rig the election; and the Benin Electricity Distribution Company (BEDC), of allegedly planning to cut off power to collation centres.

Mayaki, however, poured iced water on what he called “wild, reckless and panicky allegations.”

“To start with when you’re faced with total and crushing defeat, you suddenly begin to see anyone and everyone as your enemy,” Mayaki declared.

The Media Head of the APC Campaign argued that Nehikhare’s desperate resort to primitive blackmail against Tinubu was because the APC chieftain was spot on, pointing out Obaseki’s “serious democratic crimes”.

“Is it not true that Obaseki subverted the overwhelming majority of Edo legislators from carrying out their duties?  Are those legislators from Lagos?  Are they not Edo sons barred from their work by a desperate and thoughtless governor? Did the whole world not see Obaseki and his thugs pour gravel to block off the Edo State House of Assembly and remove the roof, in cynical destruction, which they claimed was repair? ” Mayaki asked.

He wondered when it became a crime for an APC partisan to campaign for his party, when such an opportunity has been seized by PDP partisans outside Edo State.

“PDP is wailing and resorting to ethnic slurs and blackmail because everyone knows Tinubu spoke the truth and nothing but the bitter truth.  In any case if PDP is not outraged by Rivers Governor, Nyesom Wike’s, claim that Obaseki had sold Edo to PDP ‘tax collectors’, why is the Tinubu restatement of truth, that everyone knows, making PDP to go wild,” he added.

Mayaki was of the view that instead of the Edo animosity in Nehikhare’s fertile mind, the Edo constituents, of the denied lawmakers, were eagerly waiting to punish Obaseki on Saturday.

“And they are not even only the only ones. Obaseki has brutalised too many people, throughout Edo State, with his reckless use of crude power.  Saturday is payback time,” he said.

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Mayaki further said that the PDP attack on BEDC underscored the party’s desperation, and how much it was preparing to explain away its crushing defeat.

“Why would a private DisCo, still struggling to find its feet in the tough electricity market, be so reckless as to entrap itself in election day politics?” Mayaki asked, adding “that can only make sense in the confused mind of PDP.”

He contended that if anyone had earned Edo enmity, it is the Obaseki camp, who he claimed, had tried to disrespect the revered Oba of Benin, simply because the Oba sued for a peaceful election; and also levied war on other royal fathers, particularly, in Edo North, where the PDP is immensely unpopular.

“But we in APC are not even making a meal of this grand misconduct, simply because we know our people, the Edo, who are neither cowards or bastards, would speak, loud and clear, with their PVC on Saturday,” he said.

Mayaki, however, pointed out that since the campaign started, PDP had wasted its time on empty conspiracy theories and violence, saying its latest wild rants should surprise nobody.

“Let’s leave PDP to their whining,” he declared, insisting: “We are winning and winning big on Saturday.”