The intrigues surrounding who emerges candidate in the two major political parties of Edo State appear to be deepening. In the All Progressives Congress (APC) where incumbent Governor, Godwin Obaseki appeared ready to take the party\u2019s flag in the primaries, intrigues within the party have chucked him out. He was disqualified by the party\u2019s screening committee for \u201cdefective\u201d qualifications. His challenger from the opposing political party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2016 governorship election, Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu has in the meantime crossed over to the APC, apparently favoured by the party\u2019s national leadership to clinch the ticket of the APC. And in the other major party, PDP, its governorship ticket appears to be hanging. Speculations are rife that Obaseki, disqualified by the APC is angling to be the party\u2019s flagbearer in the September 19 governorship election following his resignation from the APC. For Edo State, nothing would have changed if the same candidates but this time, in different political parties, were to emerge again as candidates in the two leading political parties. INEC has set June 27 for submission of nominations of candidates by the parties. For observers, the worry is that again, Edo State governorship contest could face the threat of violence. At this time, the risk is rated high and election observers, the electoral commission and security services would need to prepare to confront the possibility of violence during the governorship election. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tension has been building up within the APC and\nin the State ahead of the governorship election in the light of the fallout\nbetween Governor Obaseki and his predecessor and National Chairman of the APC,\nAdams Oshiomhole. Factions have emerged in the party following this development\nand have defied several reconciliation attempts. The altercation was further\nintensified by disagreements over the party\u2019s preferred mode of primary to\nselect its governorship candidate. While Oshiomhole and the National Working\nCommittee (NWC) of the party opted for direct primary, members of the party\nloyal to Obaseki preferred indirect primary election. The State Government therefore\nissued a regulation to the effect that political parties will be prohibited\nfrom conducting direct primaries in the State in a bid to contain the spread of\nCOVID-19. While other political parties like the major opposition, PDP have\nchosen indirect primaries, the APC has insisted on direct primary. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The tiff in APC goes back to the issue of\ngodfatherism in Edo elections. Oshiomhole had first contested for governorship\nelection in Edo State, defeating the candidate of the PDP who was supported by\nthen PDP strong man, Anthony Anenih. Anenih was seen as the ultimate godfather\nin Edo politics and nobody emerged in any political position without his\nendorsement. Oshiomhole emerged Governor in a swell of popular votes and\nboasted then that godfatherism had been defeated in the State\u2019s politics. It\nwould appear that Oshiomhole only worked to replace Anenih with himself as the\ngodfather of Edo politics. In 2016, he had singlehandedly handpicked the\nincumbent governor as the candidate of his party in the election. Whether his new role would endure is now a\nmatter of how Edo people decide in the September 19, 2020 governorship\nelection. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The intrigues surrounding who emerges candidate in the two major political parties of Edo State appear to be deepening. In the All Progressives Congress (APC) where incumbent Governor, Godwin Obaseki appeared ready to take the party\u2019s flag in the primaries, intrigues within the party have chucked him out. He was disqualified by the party\u2019s screening […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1519,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1517"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1528,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1517\/revisions\/1528"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}