Oshiomhole seeking third term by proxy, says Shaibu

From Bolaji Ogundele, Abuja

Edo State Deputy Governor Philip Shaibu has alleged that the former national chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, is plotting a third term through the party’s governorship candidate, Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu.

Shaibu, who levelled the allegation through a statement by his Senior Special Assistant on Media, Mr. Benjamin Atu, in Abuja yesterday, said the people were determined to follow  Governor Godwin Obaseki because he had shown them in the last four years how his policies had worked across the state.

Shaibu, who noted that Ize-Iyamu was merely a stooge, added that the real person seeking to return to rule the state was Comrade Oshiomhole. He described the alleged plot as a breach of Nigeria’s constitutional process.

“The truth is that Ize-Iyamu is merely a stooge. The real man seeking the governorship position is Adams Oshiomhole, who has perfected a plan to betray democracy by seeking third term. The price Oshiomhole will pay for projecting Ize-Iyamu is an outright rejection.

“Oshiomhole is displaying blind compassion, with a specific pledge to return to the state on the path of backwardness, with failed institutions, where individuals will be more powerful than government institutions, with an analogue system of operations. Technological development has since left Oshiomhole behind in the scheme of things.

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“We need a new kind of politics and policies that reflect the best value of our people. Politics that focuses on bringing people together to work for the common good.

“We have displayed determination to end the culture of government that habitually failed to stimulate investment; provide massive employment for youths and failed to reduce poverty and hardship in the land.

“Edo State has a choice to choose between policies of the heart by Governor Obaseki and policies of the head as being propagated by enemies of the state.

“The people of Edo State subscribed voluntarily to the principle of Obaseki because they have seen these principles at work all over the state. We cannot risk the future of Edo State with a man’s shrunken aspirations. Good men cannot be shunned away from politics while those who ought to be defending their integrity are parading themselves as party candidates,” Shaibu said.

He said Governor Obaseki is not talking rhetoric like Oshiomhole and his godson are doing.

“Our campaign is based on the affirmation of what we have done and still capable of doing, by drawing our strength from the masses to deal with our vulnerabilities.

“The incumbent administration inherited a backward state, but we have grown our ways out from backwardness. Obaseki has bridged the yawning credibility gap between what was a promise and how it is performed and transformed into reality,” Shaibu said.