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Edo South Senatorial District’s meeting of the All Progressives Congress (APC), ended with party chieftain, Chief Lucky Imasuen booed following his move to drive the imposition of Engr Omoregie Ogbeide Ihama as the district’s senatorial ticket for the election holding in 2027.
Governor Monday Okpebholo, sources said, had allegedly given the order to Mr. Lawrence Orkah, Secretary of the Edo State APC chapter, to get party members to foist the candidacy of Engr Omoregie Ogbeide-Ihama on the people.
Disenchanted teeming members of the party, who crowded a main hall of the Government House, located in Benin City, the state capital where the meeting held, rejected the move.
Problem started when Chief Lucky Imasuen, a former Deputy Governor in the short-lived Prof Osereimen Osunbor’s government (2007-2008), was shouted down and booed, whilst he tried hard but failed to prompt them into endorsing Engr Ogbeide-Ihama as APC consensus candidate for the Edo South Senatorial seat, whose primary election takes place in few days.
Sources, who were eyewitnesses to the senatorial meeting, said Chief Imasuen announced to the members, the party’s endorsement of Engr Omoregie Ogbeide-Ihama as APC’s candidate for the district, in the 2027 general elections, resulting a thunderous ‘no’ from the crowd.
According to eyewitnesses, who chose not to be named, the crowd was rowdy and uncontrollable as it sang derogatory songs about the former number two citizen of the state, and several top leaders of the party, whom they claimed to be in the plot to impose Ogbeide-Ihama as a consensus candidate.
One of the party members, who had a short video of the incident, said it was the second time Imasuen was booed by “a rightly angry crowd”, like it was done to him in 2008, and nearly lynched in the Benin High Court premises, during the sitting of an election petition tribunal, which sacked him and Senator Osunbor from office.
With only few days to holding the APC’s party election to pick the senatorial candidates for the three senatorial slots in the state, and across the country, the state branch of the party has been entangled in intense crises of imposition of candidates for the elections, particularly in Edo South, which majority of its members are vehemently opposed to.
With prolonged chanting of POI for Senate, the eyewitnesses further confirmed that many in the crowd were in support of the aspiration of Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu, a notable pillar of the party in the state and former governorship candidate, who stood behind Senator Monday Okpebholo, in the state governorship election of 2024.
Asked why Governor Monday Okpebholo, couldn’t support him, when it mattered the most, some members of the party said that they regretted the actions of the governor.
They claimed the governor’s action amounts to the betrayal of his good friend. They further alleged that he was obviously acting on the instructions of some powerful party members from Abuja.
In a strongly worded statement, titled “Tinubu or Wike? Where does Governor Monday Okpebholo’s allegiance lie”, Mr. Clifford Obazuwa, a chieftain of the Edo South party, asserted that: “What has shocked many party faithful is not merely the disagreement itself, but the manner in which the Governor is alleged to have openly aligned with the preferred candidate of the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Engr. Ogbeide-Ihama, in what many insiders now describe as a direct affront to the authority and political leadership of the President.”
Speaking on the crisis, Engr. Austin Osaghae, an APC adherent from Uhunmwode, one of the seven local government areas (LGAs) that consist of the south district, said that the Legacy Group, a breakaway from the opposition PDP, with its top members, were the cause.
He also claimed that the governor was ordered to abandon those who worked assiduously for the victory of the party, and instead reward those who did not labor, like Ogbeide-Ihama and his group’s members.
On the way out of the crisis, Osaghae advised that “where there are no forced consensus in choosing the various flagbearers, free and fair primary election should be held for more acceptable candidates to emerge.
He further said that Edo APC cannot afford to have more grievances amongst its teeming and faithful members, with imposition of candidates, otherwise the party could lose the state, let alone getting the 2.5 million votes promised President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s re-election, made by the governor.
