Edo State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has told the state’s chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that it is too early to suffer hallucinations, but to face serious campaigning. It declared that only issue-based campaigns, which would help Edo electorate to clearly make their choice on September 19, would help everyone now, not wild rumors, which it said, unfortunately, had become the jittery PDP’s pastime. Reacting to the latest scare-mongering from the PDP camp, of a fictive van filled with imaginary arms, Edo APC Media Campaign Council, yesterday through its Chairman, Prince John Maiyaki, noted that it was only in PDP members’ fertile imagination.
It said: “The latest falsehood from the hallucinating PDP is a branded van, loaded with arms, from Kogi State. Let the operatives of the Department of State Services (DSS) go ahead and probe the latest allegation, but take it from us: it is another ploy to divert attention from the real thing: the PDP is scared of a bad beating at the polls on September 19, and it tries to divert the people’s attention. Edo APC is too busy taking its candidate, Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu’s SIMPLE agenda, to the receptive and rapturous residents of the state, that it has no time for hallucinating games.
“Compare our campaigns with theirs. Look at the Edo people’s passion, as they warm up to Pastor Ize-Iyamu’s messages of hope, as we touch down in every community, in all parts of Edo State. Why would we disrupt the campaigns going on so well for us, to run arms? Does a popular and accepted party need to intimidate anyone?” APC in Edo also stated that given the deceit and dissembling that PDP had used since the electioneering began, it should not surprise anyone, if the so-called vans were PDP’s creations, imaginary or real.
“Obaseki wasted four years and yet he could not prove himself. Now, his adopted party members are wasting the short campaign period, passing around rumours, simply because they lack winning ideas. When we win big on September 19, they will mouth another set of rumours and lies, but we wish them well. Hard work, not wild rumours, win elections. We mean serious business. Let PDP members continue to waste precious time. They will see the result on September 19.”
But the Chairman of Edo PDP Campaign Council, Chief Dan Orbih, who is the National Vice Chairman, Southsouth, of the party, claimed that Ize-Iyamu’s SIMPLE agenda was vague and it would not solve economic problems allegedly created by a former governor of the state, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, a former National Chairman of APC. He urged Edo voters not to be deceived by the litany of lies and propaganda of the APC and its governorship candidate, ahead of the September 19 poll.
Orbih, who spoke yesterday to PDP’s faithful in Wards 3, 4, 7 and 10, in Esan West Local Government Area of Edo State, stated that the crucial election was not just about the party’s standard-bearer, Godwin Obaseki, but the future, progress and development of Edo. He pleaded with people of the state to cast their votes en masse for Obaseki and his deputy, Philip Shaibu, to further consolidate their first-term achievements.
THE NATION