Orbih-led Edo PDP Group Vows to Produce Governorship Candidate in 2024

Adibe Emenyonu in Benin-city

Ahead of the 2024 governorship election in Edo State, a new group within the state controlled Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) led by the Vice Chairman, South-south of the party, Chief Dan Orbih, has vowed to produce the party candidate for the next governorship election.

The group said it would resist any plan by the state Governor, Godwin Obaseki, to “impose” his preferred person as the candidate of the party.

 A leader of the party, who attended the meeting held at the residence of Orbih, confided yesterday that the group called Legacy Coalition is made up of old members of the party before Obaseki joined in 2020.

He said the Legacy Group is made up of members of the party led by Orbih and some founding members of the party who had left earlier and those who came to the PDP with the governor from the All Progressives Congress (APC).

Prominent among the new group was a member of the Board of Trustees (BoT) of the PDP, Charles Idahosa; former state Woman Leader of the APC, Dr. Esosa Amadasun; former Speaker of the state House of Assembly, Frank Okiye, a former state Commissioner in Adams Oshiomhole administration, Orobosa Omo-Ojo, nine former local government area chairmen among others.

The Legacy Group also has Owere Dickson Imasogie; former senatorial candidate of the PDP for Edo North, Pascal Ugbmohe; two former members of the House of Representatives, Ogbeide-Ihama and Sergius Ogun; the state Secretary of the party, Hilary Otsu; the state Woman Leader of the party, Tes Soroe, and others.

Addressing the group before it went into a closed-door session, Orbih said with the victory of the PDP in the off-circle governorship election in Bayelsa State, which the party won, it was possible for the opposition to win election under the President Bola Tinubu administration with proper planning even as he lamented that Obaseki’s coming into the party divided it.

 According to him, “We have realised that we have challenges in our state, we have also realised that we have our destiny in our hands. The governor that will emerge through your support will be a governor that will not ask you to introduce yourself before he recognises you. We are going to have a governor that has been part of us and will remain part of us; a governor that will realise the challenges we are facing as a state.

“One of the reasons I am no longer as frequent as I used to be in Benin-city is that each time I look at what we are facing today, I bleed in my heart. Here was a PDP that was united in love before the election of Governor Godwin Obaseki, he joined us and divided the party, but today, with the faces of those present here, I am convinced more than ever before that the way forward for PDP to retain power is to elect one among this group who will be the next governor of Edo State.”

On his part, Idahosa said the party must communicate adequately with the national leadership of the party so that they would get a fair hearing even, as he criticised the crisis between the governor and his deputy, and faulted the leaders for not speaking out against the actions of the governor which he said has made the deputy governorship position “very unattractive.”