From Tony Osauzo, Benin
The Edo State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), yesterday, engaged in verbal war over a viral video in which governor Godwin Obaseki expressed fear that voters may prefer other parties to the two main political parties in the forthcoming general elections if they fail to put their house in order.
The APC had in reaction, asked the governor to limit his lamentations over the national calamity that has befallen his party, the PDP and its disgrace especially in the concluded Ekiti State governorship election to himself.
The party in a statement signed by its State Assistant Publicity Secretary, Victor Osehobo, alleged that “Mr Obaseki raised a false alarm on the impact of the social media ‘Obidient’ movement of the Labour party Presidential Candidate, Mr Peter Obi, on the chances of other parties in the 2023 presidential elections.
“In the video, Obaseki alleged that Nigerians were disenchanted with existing parties, and are looking for alternatives, hence the many queues for Permanent Voters Card, PVCs across the country”, statement said while faulting the governor and urged him to be wary of consistently raising false alarms instead of facing his job of governing Edo State.
“The APC is disappointed that Mr. Obaseki who has lost face in his adopted party, while abandoning governance in Edo State, has become a false prophet who busies himself with fake claims and false prophecies about the Nigerian economy, the naira and now the 2023 election, all in a bid to elicit unmerited public sympathy for his abysmal failure as a governor.
“All Nigerians apart from Mr. Obaseki know for a fact that the queues for PVC is because many want to meet the new deadline of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, and more so at a time more people have realized that they are stakeholders in the Nigerian project and want to be on the positive side of history by owning a PVC which confers on them the power to choose the leaders they desire.
“What abounds in our nation as the 2023 elections draw near is the morbid apprehension that the country risk falling back into the locust years of the PDP, during which the party destroyed our economy, looted the treasury and made the country a laughing stock in the comity of nations, to the extent that life became so despondent to the average Nigerian who cried to God for an alternative party such as the APC.
“The alternative party, APC has been trying, under the purposeful leadership of President Muhammad Buhari to clean up the mess of PDP’s inglorious reign while at the same time striving to move the nation to the next level”.
“We accept the fact that Obaseki and his failed PDP government in Edo lack the capacity for feedback mechanism, however, the APC wishes to bring to the attention of the PDP that all Edo people today would wish this administration had come to its end.
“Notwithstanding, our party counsel that the governor and the PDP should prepare for more defeats in all the elections leading to May 29, 2023 which has begun with the evident disgrace the party secured at Ekiti.
“The APC urges Edo people in particular and Nigerians in general to continue to rally with our party as we collectively prepare to keep locusts represented by the PDP out of power and put our nation on the track of prosperity which President Muhammad Buhari and the APC has been striving to do”, the statement added.
But the PDP in a statement said the APC has lost touch with reality and will be rejected across all levels of government in the forthcoming general elections because of their insensitivity to the plights of Nigerians, which is the height of their transgressions against the masses.
The statement signed by the State Publicity Secretary, Ogie Aigbe Vasco, berated the APC for kneeling on the neck of Nigerians, noting: “Never in the history of this country have Nigerians experienced so much excruciating pain and suffering as result of economic hardship, extreme poverty, frightening level of insecurity, and spiralling hike in commodities prices than under the nearly eight years of misrule by the APC-led federal government.
“It is bad enough that the APC has run Nigeria aground, but is even worse that they are not sensitive enough to feel the excruciating pains they have inflicted on the people.
“The Edo APC and its sociopathic members are only insulting the sensibility of Nigerians by even assuming that by any guise or circumstance that they can ever return to power after the carnage that they have wrought by their scandalous management of Nigeria’s economy and its diversity.
“It is under the APC administration that any Nigerian travelling from one state to another or even within the same state will have to leave some money with their next of kin for ransom because it is almost a given that they may be kidnapped.
“Under the APC-led federal government, women have had to eventually give up farming which used to be one of the highest contributors to the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). More so, these women who constitute more than 50 to 60 percent of the total farmers’ workforce across the value chain from planting, processing, and distribution, have become essentially unemployed and are being ravished by hunger and poverty.
“Is it not worrying to the Edo APC that out of the nearly eight years that they have been in power, Nigerian students have been home for an aggregate period of two years due to strike action by lecturers who have been battered to submission by APC-led government, who have refused to invest in tertiary education?” the statement queried.
It added “The cost of a bag of rice has risen from N8,000 to N40,000, a record 500 percent increase; an egg which used to cost N30 rose to N100 for one; a loaf of bread which used to cost N250 is now N1000; price of diesel has risen from 450 to N1000 and dollars rose from N180, during the PDP era to N700 per dollar under this insensitive government.
“Yet Victor Osehobo and his Edo APC stalwarts dare to question Governor Godwin Obaseki’s rationale to say Nigerians are fed up? APC must be living in limbo or perhaps a bubble created by the figments of their imagination.”
“The APC is but a mere disgrace to opposition politics in Edo State. The good people of Edo State already know their divisive antics and will not be perturbed by their wailings to distract a Governor who is working assiduously, unlike the APC-led federal government, to improve the livelihoods of the people and place the state on a path of sustainable growth and development”.