As Edo state prepares for its governorship election later this year, three of the five aspirants contesting to be the next governor of the state on the platform of Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, have formed a formidable partnership by agreeing to support whoever among them emerges the party’s flag bearer.
The aspirants are; Chief Solomon Edebiri, Matthew Iduoriykemwen and Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu, spoke in Benin City, the state capital during an interactive session at a dinner organized by an Edo PDP social media group known as Unity League.
The trio pledged to ensure that the interest of the party was supreme even as they scored the outgoing governor, Comrade Adams Oshiohole of the All Progressives Congress, APC, low.
The aspirants in their separate remarks at the event on Monday insisted that a lot still needed to be done to reposition the state economically, socially and politically.
The aspirants, who spoke on their visions, missions and plans for Edo State, if elected governor, stressed the need to work collectively in order to save the state from what they termed its parlous state.
Opening the floor, Chief Edebiri, who noted that all the industries such as Bendel Insurance, Edo Line, Bendel Brewery and Agbede Farm among others, established by previous administrations had all collapsed, promised that if elected, he would tap into the state’s human and capital resources to turn things around.
“Today, those things are no more. Many people have lost their jobs and Edo State is no longer an industrial state. We have become beggars and nothing has changed. To bring those things back and develop the state, we will create a one local government, one crop policy”, he said.
On his part, Mr. Iduoriyikemwen said, “I have touched the lives of people around me. I have created opportunities for them and I will do the same for Edo State. We must count Edo State first. I believe in this state and I have the capacity to rule”.
In his remark, Pastor Ize-Iyamu, who is a former Secretary to Edo State Government and former chieftain of the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, which fused with other former opposition parties to form the APC, flaunted his towering records as a former SSG, pointing out that he has the “network to reach beyond our party to the other parties to ensure that we win this election”.
