Edo 2024: APC Aspirant Kicks Against Candidate Imposition

An All Progressives Congress (APC) aspirant in the November 2024 governorship election in Edo State, Dr. Blessing Agbomhere has raised the alarm over plans to impose a candidate on the APC.

Agbomhere, who accused former national chairman of APC, Senator Adams Oshiomhole of planning to foist an aspirant as the party’s flagbearer, said party members in the state will reject such arraignment by electing an unblemished candidate who can win the governorship seat.

Agbomhere, a former South-South zonal organising secretary of the APC, alleged that Oshiomhole had concluded plans to coerce the national chairman of the APC, Dr Abdulahi Umar Ganduje into appointing Imo State Governor, Hope Uzodinma as the chairman of the Edo State Primaries Committee.

He further alleged that about 326,212 votes will be cooked up in favour of the preferred candidate, while a handful of votes will be allocated to the 11 other aspirants.

He noted that Uzodinma is to use the opportunity of the Edo State Primaries to pay back the former Edo governor for handing him the party’s ticket to contest the governorship position in Imo State in 2018, when the party leader presided over the affairs of the party as national chairman.

In a statement which he signed in Abuja yesterday, Agbomhere insisted that stakeholders in the party have at various times expressed the need for a free and fair primaries in Edo State but that Oshiomhole is bent on imposing a candidate on the party which he said will be vehemently opposed and will end up ridiculing the democratic principles and antecedents the President Bola Tinubu is known for and had always stood for.

Agbomhere said: “APC’s National Working Committee must not allow Senator Oshiomhole to ridicule APC and President Bola Ahmed Tinubu again in Edo State. Chief Hope Uzodinma was the Chairman of the APC Party Primaries Committee that returned Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu as the Candidate of the party in 2020 and stayed with the duo of Ize-Iyamu and Oshiomhole throughout the period of the election, hence his coming again in 2024 will be seen as that of a hatchet man.”

Agbomhere added that if Oshiomhole’s plot is left unchecked, the APC would be thrown into a massive crisis which will snowball into a catastrophic loss of the November governorship election.