APC Leadership Wades into Oshiohmole, Deputy’s Feud

• S’South PDP governors’ meeting, exercise in futility, says party

Onyebuchi Ezigbo in Abuja and Adibe Emenyonu in Benin City

The national leadership of of the All Progressives Congress (APC) monday waded into the succession crisis brewing between the Edo State Governor, Adams Oshiohmole and his deputy, Chief Pius Obudu, by setting up a five-man committee to reconcile them.

The National Chairman of the party, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, has set up a five-man fact-finding and reconciliation committee headed by the former Governor of Osun State, Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola, to visit the state as part of efforts to arrest the crisis between the state governor and his deputy.
Other members of the committee are Senator Osita Izunaso, Senator Ndoma Egba, Hajiya Fatimah Mohammed and Alhaji Ahmed Abdullahi.

Speaking during inauguration of the committee, Oyegun expressed concern over crisis that has suddenly engulfed the party in the state.

“It is a matter for concern and has been at all levels of party and government. That is a state we hold so dear to our heart. A state where there has been a lot of breakthroughs in terms of development which it has not witnessed for a long time.

“A state under an APC governor who has done so much to uplift virtually every part that suffered neglect over a long period of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) administration that just a matter of months to an election and weeks to primaries should be engulfed so to speak in the kind of unfortunate intra-party dispute at virtually all levels-party, government and now the state assembly level,” he said.

On the tussle over the state governorship candidate, Oyegun said: “I cannot and national headquarters cannot except a situation where the party itself, is seen to be discriminating among the aspirants.

“That cannot be accepted, we are a party of change and we must emphasised that in every thing we do the example was set with our presidential primaries and that is one of the major catarpault that has placed us where we are today and we are not going to go back on the need, the necessity, for free and fair primaries, which means that the party itself must be as neutral as possible because all aspirants are its children,” he added.

Meanwhile, the state chapter of the APC yesterday described the gathering of the PDP governors in the South-south as an exercise in futility, saying their gathering to promote what people of the state have rejected, would be in vein.
Governors of PDP in the South-south met in Asaba, capital of Delta State, last Sunday to strategise on how to wrest power from the APC-led government in the state in forthcoming governorship election slated for September 10 this year.
The Governor of Delta State, Ifeanyi Okowa, who brief the media disclosed that one of the issues they discussed was how the party in the region will put its house in order to win Edo State election.
But the APC Publicity Secretary in Edo State, Godwin Erhabor in a telephone chart with THISDAY in Benin City, said there was no cause for alarm.

He said the PDP governors should first tell Edo people where they were since the state was being vandalised between 1999 to 2008.
According to him, “They should tell us why they watched Edo looted and what was their reaction. Why did they choose to remain silent when the state was being vandalised?”

Erhahon said: “So telling our people to vote for PDP is like telling them to go to their toilets to feed on their excreta.”