The Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Edo State, Hillary Otsu, has said the state governor, Godwin Obaseki, is a curse rather than a blessing to the party.
According to him, unlike his predecessors on the party’s platform in the state, Obaseki’s precedents and records in the party happen to have been more of a curse to the party and the Edo people.
TrackNews Media reports that Obaseki decamped to the PDP from the All Progressives Congress (APC) in June 2020 when he was seeking re-election for his second term in office.
Recall that the APC had disqualified him from seeking re-election on the platform due to alleged submission of questionable certificates.
Speaking with TrackNews Media in an interview, Otsu, said under Obaseki, Edo not only lost the presidential election, the state did not win a single National Assembly seat.
Compared to the previous government, the Edo PDP secretary noted that “Compare that with previous years when we had no Obaseki in our party when Chief Dan Orbih was leading PDP as a strong opposition party, we always won at least two Senate seats and a minimum of four or five House of Reps seats.”
Otsu submitted that “It isn’t rocket science to understand that Obaseki coming to PDP turned out to be a curse and not a blessing, both to PDP and to Edo people. This narrative of a curse can even be perceived on the streets of Benin City and major cities.
“All the candidates fielded by Gov. Obaseki were unpopular, and most voters in their various constituencies were also aware of the illegal processes which brought them. So many of the voters who followed all that transpired leading the emergence of Obaseki’s candidates, worked and voted against them, and most PDP supporters opted to work against the illegal candidates by supporting other candidates.
”That’s why you see that in many places, they gave support to APC candidates and, in some, to Labour candidates, leading to unprecedented victories for those Parties. For example, the PDP had never lost Edo Central and South Senatorial seats before, while a Labour candidate swept the Edo South Senate seat, after leaving the PDP for Labour just a few months before the election.
”Furthermore, I believe there was an uncoordinated conspiracy by all to prove to the world that Obaseki wasn’t a popular governor. Many of us were pleased that the national body has come to realise that without the Legacy PDP, Obaseki cannot win Edo State for PDP. And so, for the first time in history, PDP also lost Edo in a Presidential election and did not win a single National Assembly seat.”
