The Edo State Governor, Godwin Obaseki, has vowed to remain in the All Progressives Congress as he battles for the party’s governorship ticket to seek re-election. Obaseki said this while addressing members of the Obaseki Mandate Group FCT, in Abuja, on Tuesday.
He said his supporters had offered to pay for his expression of interest and nomination forms “on any platform he chooses” but that his choice remains the APC platform which brough him to political limelight. Obaseki said, “I have chosen the party that brought me in the first place–the APC. No matter the challenges, I will run on the platform of my party. And I’m sure by the grace of God, I will overcome.”
Speaking about the APC primary, the governor said, “I’m not saying I won’t have contestants, of course, democracy is about contestations. Tell me what you want to do for the people, and I will tell you what I can do. Tell me what you have done for the people and I will also tell the people what I have done for them and the people will make a choice, that is what democracy is about, that is what our democracy should be.”
He noted that his desire for seeking a re-election was built on the determination to restore Edo State to its pride of place. Obaseki said there were very few political structures and kingdoms in Africa that had survived for over six hundred years like the Benin Kingdom. He noted that when he assumed office, Edo youths were mainly interested in leaving the state at all cost even if it meant taking very hazardous trips across the Sahara to get somewhere.
He said, “Edo became the human trafficking capital of the continent because we had lost hope, our leadership had failed us. They’ve not only failed us, they have also started to fail subsequent generations and that is our mandate to stop this trend, that is what we promised, because we are all products of a system that was great, so we have no reason, no right not to give back what we got. It took a while; it has taken two generations of decay but we knew that it will not take a decade to fix.
“And you can see our early steps – the first three years what we have done. We have given our people hope and I’m happy that that hope is being reflected in your passion today. When on your own, you have decided to organise yourself to mobilise your own resources to support a cause you believe in.”
“Today we have almost 300,000 children in Edo state in our public-school system who are now learning. Even with Covid-19, even being at home, we have been able to get learning to them in their homes. Go and see what we are doing with the Benin Technical College, go and see what we are doing with our Colleges of Agriculture.”
The governor noted that the Covid-19 pandemic had altered the lives of people across the globe as such, “anybody who is seeking public office today that has no track record of how he served the public good, or has no track record of success in anything else, that has no track record of having managed not even a kiosk successfully cannot and should not be given an opportunity to serve.”
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