Guber poll: Edo people will oppose imported candidate, group tells Obaseki

A group under the aegis of People’s Defender Advocate/Civil Society Practitioner, has said that Edo people will oppose the “importation of diaspora” person as governorship candidate in the forthcoming 2024 governorship election.

The group also called on the political parties in the state to jettison the clamour for power shift or zoning in their primaries or main election, as it will spell doom for the state.

The Convener of the group, Bishop Osadolor Anthony Ochei, said this in Benin while addressing journalists on the forthcoming 2024 governorship election.

He said the recent development where the three senatorial districts of South, Central and North, respectively, laying claims to the sole governorship seat and even issuing threats, in the buildup to the primaries and the main election gives cause for concern.

“The governorship candidate must not be an imported governor who has not contributed to the development of Edo state in the time past,” he said.

“He must pass the litmus test of educational qualifications,
contributed to the development of his hometown; versed in experience; have verifiable pedigrees of performances in the private and public sectors and must not have criminal records.”

Bishop Ochei noted that democracy and good governance are the bedrock of meaningful progress of every society and its people.

Ochei, however, lamented that though there is still a government in power in the state, giving the people good governance in the last months of the current government is sacred and should be of great concern to all.

Bishop Ochei said the ongoing unhealthy political developments in the state demands that the group states its position in order to stem the tide and take the state away from an avoidable precipice.

He said the bitter and determinant agitations, which tend to be tribal and sectional, continually widen the cracks of disunity even where they did not exist, thus bringing the people of the state on collusion.