Assembly crisis: ‘We’re ready to move to another party with Obaseki If…’

A chieftain of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in Edo State, Mr. Charles Idahosa, yesterday cautioned leaders and members of the party locked in the crisis rocking the state House of Assembly that if Governor Godwin Obaseki was forced out of the party, the APC would face obvious extinction in the state.

Idahosa gave the warning during a press conference in Benin, the state capital. He also vowed to swim and sink alongside other leaders of the party with Obaseki, should the governor decided to pitch tent with other opposition parties if the need arise in the state.

Idahosa also re-echoed the call for the APC National Chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, to resign from his position as he was not fit, adding that the ruling party lost five states during the recent general election in the country. He suggested, however, that the way out of the lingering crisis in Edo House of Assembly was for the 15 lawmakers-elect to comply with the party’s directive on zoning of leadership in the Assembly in line with the position of the national body of the APC.

On allegation that Governor Obaseki was ungrateful to Oshiomhole, who brought him to power, Idahosa said it was Obaseki who first helped Oshiomhole raised hundreds of millions of naira that paved the way for the former governor to contest the governorship elections in 2007. He said: Oshiomhile should resign and stop embarrassing Edo people and the rest of Nigerians; for a national chairman of a party to lose five states is an insult to our sensibility.

Obaseki won all the 24 seats in the state House of Assembly, but Oshiomhole’s media aides gave the credit to Oshiomhole. It was Obaseki who gave Oshiomhole the blue print on how to run Edo State.” According to him, “They are harassing Obaseki so that the progress in the state can stop. Nobody has told us what Obaseki has done. My regret is not because we brought a good candidate; the candidate we brought is working.

There is need for us to look at ourselves and tell ourselves the truth.” Idahosa further criticised the 15 memberselect now in Abuja for engaging themselves in financial bazaar even as against the mandate freely given to them by their constituents to represent them at the state House of Assembly. “Those lawmakers are now in Abuja, engaging themselves in financial bargaining as exposed by Said Oshiomhole confession on social media. Let them come home and destabilise Edo. If by error or commission Obaseki is pushed out, then APC is dead in Edo State,” he warned.