20 days to poll: Mass defection hits PDP

BARELY 20 days to the September 10 governorship election in Edo State, the two factions of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the state have engaged  in war of words over who is the authentic candidate of the party. The Ahmed Makarfi faction of the PDP produced Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu as its governorship candidate while that of Ali Modu Sheriff produced Matthew Iduoriyekemwen. Iduoriyekemwen is from Ikpoba Okhai, one of the largest local government areas in the state, while Ize-Iyamu is from Orhiomwon.

Ize-Iyamu, Obaseki and Oshiomhole
The factional crisis has allowed the All Progressives Congress (APC) and its governorship candidate, Mr Godwin Obaseki, to harvest more of the PDP leaders across the 192 wards of the state. Last Tuesday, Iduoriyekemwen addressed journalists in Benin City, where he accused the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, of ignoring  court orders which affirmed Sheriff as the PDP National Chairman.

While insisting that he remained the PDP candidate in the September election, Iduoriyekemwen, who is also a former state representatives in the Board of the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, and  a  former Majority Leader of the state House of Assembly, alleged that the INEC was conniving with the Markafi faction to deceive the people of Edo on  the issue of  the PDP flag bearer. “INEC has been behaving in a manner that has shown clear partisanship in the internal affairs of the PDP, openly making comments that tend to rubbish the court process.

You will be surprised that while we are busy campaigning, reaching out to voters, to show INEC’s bias, on the 20 of June, one Deputy Director of Public Affairs said they won’t monitor Sheriff faction’s primary. In another event, the same man said INEC was yet to take a decision since Sheriff has gone to court. But the Electoral Act is very clear, it does not make it mandatory for INEC to be present in a primary. It said INEC may or may not attend,”he said.

“I read the other day, INEC published 19 candidates for Edo guber and my question is when did INEC monitored the primaries of other parties because I am in Edo State. And in that publication, the intent  is to mislead Edo people not to vote for the PDP, because you could see that recently a lot of PDP leaders are moving to APC because they know that the candidate that is supposedly being paraded by the party is not the candidate that they know can deliver the party in the next election.

When it got to the party, they wrote Ize-Iyamu’s name relying on a  court order. I am here to challenge INEC to tell us what they meant by that court order, which court order are they obeying because they are a lot of court orders which said INEC should only deal with the Sheriff faction but INEC has continued to play politics to deceive Edo people? But we are determined to get justice, I remain the candidate of the party and sooner or later the court will pronounce the truth”. Shortly after, Iduoriyekemwen’s statement, Edo Youths PDP Vanguard, a pro-Ize-Iyamu group, described  him  as a political prostitute.

The  group, on a  statement  by its Chairman, Eghosa Osazuwa, alleged that Iduoriyekemwen was in a mission to hand victory  to the Governor Adams Oshiomhole-led APC in the poll, describing Iduoriyekemwen as an unserious politician who must apologise to the PDP. However, another group in the PDP, which is pro-Iduoriyekemwen, under the aegis of Next Generation Foundation, says it is Ize-Iyamu that needs to apologize for his political prostitution and not Iduoriyekemwen, recalling that while Ize-Iyamu had left the PDP for the then ACN, Iduoriyekemwen had been a member of the PDP since 1999.

While the two PDP factions battle for the soul of the party ahead of  the election, thousands of their members defect to the APC in droves. A total 4,536 aggrieved PDP members in Egor and Ikpoba Okhai LGAs  decamped to the APC, just as the AREWA group in Edo, led by the President-General, Alh.Sahabi Aliu Umar, endors