PDP should suspend Obaseki not Shaibu, says APC

The acrimony between the Edo State All Progressives Congress and the Peoples Democratic Party festered on Tuesday with the APC describing the call for Philip Shaibu’s resignation from the PDP as irritating and baseless.

Shaibu, a former deputy governor of the state who was impeached on April 8 but still remains a member of the PDP, on Sunday in Benin, described the PDP candidate for the September 21 governorship election, Asue Ighodalo, as an outsider, who should be rejected by the electorate.

The former deputy governor, who lost to Ighodalo in the PDP primary election, also said that he would be supporting the APC candidate, Senator Monday Okpebholo, whom he described as a homeboy needed to govern Edo State.

In his response on Monday, the Deputy Director of the PDP in charge of Media, Rev. Olu Martin, called for the resignation of Shaibu from the party.

He said that the former deputy governor could not be in the party and be demarketing Ighodalo, faulting Shaibu’s claim that the PDP candidate is an outsider in the race.

In a new twist on Tuesday, the APC, in defence of Shaibu, who was a former member of the party with his former boss, Godwin Obaseki, having been elected on the platform of the party in 2016, said the PDP should rather be concerned that Obaseki was leading the party to political oblivion.

The Publicity Director of the Edo State APC, Orobosa Omo-Ojo, in a statement on Tuesday in Benin, said, “The All Progressives Congress wishes to call on Nigerians and Edo people in particular, to ignore the irritating and baseless call on a former deputy governor of Edo State, Philip Shaibu, to resign his membership of the drowning Peoples Democratic Party, because of his open declaration of support for Senator Monday Okpebholo, the candidate of the APC.

“It is obvious that PDP is yet to understand the hurricane that has happened in their party. Virtually everyone with political relevance has left and those still in the party are only lying in wait as undertakers to bury the party.

“Rather than ask Shaibu to resign, the PDP should suspend their outgoing governor, Obaseki, for leading them to political obscurity in Edo State.

“Comrade Philip Shaibu is an Iroko, a true definition of homeboy and a political giant in the state, like the APC candidate, Senator Monday Okpebholo.

“The APC wishes to give free advice to the dead PDP that it should concentrate its energy on how to tell Edo people what Asue Ighodalo and his running mate intend to bring on board after both have served the state for 28 years without any major development.

“The only sane thing left for the PDP is to join Obaseki and Ighodalo on a pleading tour of the state and beg for forgiveness, especially after last week’s confession by the state government that question papers for basic examination in the state was leaked to public schoolteachers in the state, which eventually ended up with maize sellers.

“We are by this statement demanding that Edo State Government should immediately set up an independent panel of inquiry to investigate the circumstances that led to the series of examination questions leakages that have trailed the so-called Edo Best education programme since 2020.”