A frontline governorship aspirant of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in forthcoming election in Edo State, Omoregie Ogbeide-Ihama has said he instituted the lawsuit against the party to prevent impending disaster following the defection of Edo State Governor Godwin Obaseki.
He said on Wednesday that the manner the governor was being imposed on party stakeholders by the national leadership ahead of the primaries scheduled for Thursday, June 25 was unacceptable.
He said the injunction is about is the flawed process that has been adopted to put the governor on the ballot for the primaries.
“Before I embarked on this project to serve our state in executive capacity over a year ago, I consulted extensively with leaders within and outside our party, and with the assurances and promise of support I got, we embarked on the tedious and demanding process of reaching out and building relationships and alliances with our members across the 18 local governments of the state.
“This year-long exercise culminated with another ‘meet-the-delegates tour’ across the state last week, after which we came back to prepare for primaries.
“Suddenly the brewing plan by certain ‘leaders’ in our party who for certain reasons had decided they were going to stop my ambition by all means shockingly materialized with their bringing the Governor into the party on the same day we were to have primaries they had influenced to be postponed.
“I have spent quite some time in politics and I understand that due to its dynamism, sudden strategic calculations may necessitate re-alignments and the need to make sacrifices.
“What I found difficult to understand was the brazen manner in which a process that was a few hours to completion could be bastardized, established rules and due process turned on its head, hard-work and efforts treated so inconsequentially, and key stakeholders treated so shabbily and disrespectfully. No dedicated member of the PDP deserves to be treated that way,” he said.
Ogbeide-Ihama said that it is expected that the party learn lessons from the situation in the last elections with the opposing party in Zamfara and Rivers states.
He added that even with such travesty and injustice, his loyalty to the party was first consideration adding that in the event of an ugly situation, which necessitates a change, the least that was expected was that a meeting would be called where issues could be tabled and discussed, especially pertaining to the internal and external dangers related to the process that brought in the governor.
The federal lawmaker insisted that his action was not an affront to the party or its leadership as some people may decide to interpret it, but rather a last attempt to save the party from a major blunder that could lead to series of lawsuits with a possibility of disqualification of the party from participating in the September 2020 Edo governorship election.
