The All Progressives Congress,APC, in its bid to ensure has embarked on strategies to enable it overcome obstacle on the way to recording success at the December 5 gubernatorial election in Bayelsa state.
The party made a strategic move on Monday night to settle the rift between the Edo State Governor, Adams Oshiohmole and the APC governorship candidate for the Bayelsa poll, Chief Timipre Sylva.
Both Oshiomhole and Silva got entangled in a quarrel shortly after the former who headed the primary election panel that conducted the governorship primary for Bayelsa recommended the cancellation of the exercise.
The matter was later to degenerate to serious altercations which the party considered a threat to its efforts to win the election in Bayelsa.
Speaking with neswmen at the end of the about four-hour reconciliatory meeting with Sylva held at the Sokoto Governor’s Lodge, Asokoro in Abuja Monday night, Oshiohmole said both parties had put the rift behind them.
“Definitely, even the PDP have issues. We have moved beyond reconciliation, the party in Bayelsa is one. Primaries have been contested and won, candidate has emerged and everybody is queuing behind him. We have met tonight to strategise on all the issues,” he said.
Oshiohmole who was flanked by the Governor of Sokoto State, Aminu Tambuwal and Sylva, told journalists that the people of Bayelsa were anxious to join the APC family.
“As members of the progressive family, we know that the people of Bayelsa are anxious to benefit from change, to move away from the party of conservatism to the one that promises change and we are happy that we have a candidate that has enormous electoral appeal on the basis of the structures and performance records.
“We have to look through the whole campaign plan and work out best strategies and to package a message to very well addresses the critical needs of the people.
“We are no longer talking about reconciliation. If we are talk about the people that needs reconciliation, it is the PDP because they are the people that do not even have primaries in the first place. We because we are progressive had primaries and despite protests we are oblige to service our democratic principles.
“So if you talk about issues of reconciliation, you should talk to the PDP because this is where people were forbidden from contesting elections. In our party, the APC, no one is prevented from participating in the democratic process.
“For Bayelsa, we are going for the governorship election and we are confident that we shall win. We all going to Bayelsa to campaign, we have a coherent message and we have a credible and competent messenger. In any electioneering campaign, two things are important, the quality of the message and that of the messenger. We are sure of victory.
He said even before the formal flag-off of the campaigns the party’s foot soldiers are already everywhere campaigning in the state.
In his remarks, Tambuwal said APC was on the verge of clinching victory in Bayelsa governorship election.
“It is very clear that we will emerge victorious. The barometre is written APC and there nothing anybody can do about that,” he said.