TRACKING >>A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Edo State and former Political Adviser to former Governor Adams Oshiomhole, Mr. Charles Idahosa, has called for the resignation of his former boss as the national chairman of APC.
Idahosa, who was the Political Adviser to Oshiomhole while the latter served as state governor, noted that Oshiomhole was desecrating the temple of democracy by sponsoring anti-democratic practices.
Speaking at a press conference in Benin-city, the state capital, he said: “We are all not very happy with what is happening in Edo State today, especially with the political division and the confusion. This is a situation in which we ought to be very happy. This is very strange! What is happening is a tragi-comedy. We have a governor who was brought up by a political party and the people out there are very happy and commending him for working very hard. He is very popular and you will attest to that, but the problem is with the leadership of the party.”
He continued: “While the voters are very excited, the people who brought him into power are not happy with him because, according to them, he is not carrying them along.”
On the crisis rocking the APC in state, Idahosa said the governor has repeatedly told leaders of the party that he has no issue with the APC national chairman, adding that “but Oshiomhole has refused to say ‘I did not send anybody to form any group against the governor. I have no problem with the governor’. Silence means consent. Why has he not said a word? It is a matter of simply saying, ‘I sent them or I did not send them’.”
The APC chieftain said the disagreement has snowballed into the state House of Assembly, adding: “I make bold to say that Oshiomhole is responsible for the problem of the APC in Edo State today by his silence, and people like us know that these boys in the streets are his boys. I am not his boy because we are contemporaries. Oshiomhole’s refusal to speak means he is supporting them because I do not see anything wrong for him to come out and say he did or did not send them.”
According to him, Oshiomhole is to be blamed for the crisis in the state APC. He has created division in state party.
He said during Oshiomhole’s eight-year term, he was the leader of the party, and we all deferred to him as our leader. “How come he is finding it so difficult to allow Governor Godwin Obaseki to superintend over his space as our leader in state?”
“Since you came in as a national chairman, you lost five states in your first outing. How can we lose Oyo State, the heart of old Western Region? We lost Rivers State. The bucks stop on your table as the chairman. In a decent society, he should have resigned. He shouldn’t wait for anybody to tell him. Today we have no foothold in the Southeast region.”
Idahosa decried the unilateral disposition of the national chairman of the party in decision-taking process on strategic issues concerning the party.
He chronicled the antics of Oshiomhole since his entrance into the political landscape, pointing out that the former governor has always believed in suppressing the ideas of others.
Idahosa wondered why Oshiomhole has refused to react to claims that there is a rift between him and Obaseki which the governor however denied, pointing out that silence is consent.
The Edo APC leader explained that no past governor ever intruded in the activities of Oshiomhole, and advised him to allow Obaseki to continue in his desire to deliver the dividends of democracy to Edo people who voted for him.
While recalling with nostalgia the uncomplimentary remarks by Oshiomhole on prominent sons of Bini extraction like the Esama of Benin, Chief Gabriel Osawaru Igbinedion; his son Lucky Igbinedion, who is a former governor of the state; the late Samuel Ogbemudia among others, Idahosa said it was high time the Bini people worked together to avoid re-occurrence and put the Bini in the position that rightly fits them.
Idahosa averred that Governor Obaseki has impacted positively on the socio-economic wellbeing of all Edo people and therefore deserves another four years in office.
He urged the Bini people as majority tribe to maintain leadership as governor of the state.
