By Ehi Ekhator
A former aspirant of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Dr. Pedro Obaseki, who suddenly withdrew his intention a few days ago, may be flying under Labour Party, NAIJA CENTER NEWS can authoritatively report.
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Don Obaseki withdrew intention over what he said APC had decided to do after accusing the party of making the decision in Abuja to adopt a candidate using the already bought delegates.
Speaking with NAIJA CENTER NEWS on Friday, Dr. Obaseki said the Labour Party has agreed to adopt his manifesto which focuses on pensioners, health, and Micro Finance.
He said: “We are in a very high-level talk. What we working on now is to straighten up the modalities and making sure they understand that my prime consideration is EDO.
“I would have also gone with any other party that shows capacity and willingness to push the EDO agenda, I found it in Labour.
“Labour is a convenient vehicle as it were and since labour is not a party that seems to be based on who is the biggest money bag irrespective of the source of those funds. The source of all my funds are verifiable and they are in the public domain and I hope I will be able to galvanize support at home and abroad.
“It is not the best in the circumstance, but it is the most available that best meet the aim of my political ambition, to present a non-corrosive, non-ethnic, and issue-based campaign.
“I am still looking for a manifesto from my former co-aspirants in the APC, I still can’t find one, and yet there is so much noise and everyone wants to be governor without a clear cut reason or what the deliverable are when they become governor.
“I want to go into the marketplaces, into schools and give a voice to those who necessarily might not be PDP or APC. On Paper, the registered members of the APC are still not up to 20,000 and those who are delegates to vote are below 3000, but I am talking about Edo nation of 4.8m residence.
Dr. Obaseki acknowledged that there are two other aspirants in his current party but stressed that the party will conduct primaries to elect its flag bearer.
“The leadership of the LP had been talking to me since October 2015, and they were in my office yesterday and today.
“There is going to be a primary in LP and I will contest it with the other aspirants in the party. My problem is not with the process of a primary in APC, it was because of the fact that I discovered evidentially that the APCs primaries is already pre-determined. That is why I left, that is why I withdrew from the primaries.
“I know that in APC right now, no matter what you do, it is already decided. By the time you know that a very high ranking people are plotting, it becomes terrible and when I looked at it, I decided to go public to let the people know.
“Two days after my withdrawals, other aspirants started complaining but unfortunately they had collected the forms. Mine, I found out on Thursday and I tried to verify on Friday and I went to the secretariat, and I told them to stand down.”
The aggrieved APC aspirant accused the members of the state house of assembly of unanimously buying expression of interest and nomination form for a particular candidate, which in turn means that the result of the primary was already decided since the same members would conduct the primaries.
His words: “On the same Monday, only for me to find out before 2 in the afternoon, the entire Edo State House of Assembly, elected officials of the state, of the people, of our commonwealth, decide to go and submit a particular candidate form in disregard of the rule that says delegates are not to openly canvass for any of the aspirants in the open. We are not supposed to meet some of the delegates and they don’t associate with us in public but they will follow a particular aspirant, maybe the state youth leader who is a member of the executive and the delegate, but those things can also be taken for granted.
“Not when the only senator elected on the platform of the APC in the state, goes with the only three House of Rep people to pick the form when you have other aspirants. It is not a state function or form, but a personal interest form by an individual and those are the persons who are going to run the primaries. When the officials who are the delegates, who are going to sit as a parliament to choose who runs decide to go and pick the expression of interest form and nomination form when they are other persons. When you know there is evidence of exchange of thousands of dollars, when you know that the means of identification are PVCs. After I announced my own, a day or so, the others start accusing people of selling PVCs, and the PVC is in the hands of the same elected officials.
“The state government is going to release the list of the technical committee of the local government councils that will be made up the majority of them (compromised delegates) next week.
“If after knowing how it was going t0 turned out and then run and begin to scream, people will call me a sore loser.
“Though they didn’t let me run fairly in the other party, I am here now and the party is adopting my manifesto as their agenda. They’d buy into my health initiative, pension plan and my micro-finance plan which are crucial.
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