TELL Magazine

All the 18 Local Government council chairmen in Edo State under the aegis of the Association of Local Governments of Nigeria, ALGON have reaffirmed what they said was their “irreversible support” for the eight-year tenure of the embattled governor of the state, Godwin Obaseki. They described the disqualification of the governor from participating in the governorship primary of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC by a Screening Committee set up by its National Working Committee, NWC to determine the eligibility of the six aspirants jostling for the party’s ticket as a “profound affront” on decent democratic practices.

The association said in a press statement in Benin-City on Saturday that the screening exercise was dubiously conducted in a “staged fraudulent political theatre by surrogates with predetermined sinister agenda.” Signed by its chairman, Jenkins Evbareke Osunde, the ALGON noted that the Screening Committee” violently desecrated the principles and the spirit of the APC Constitution regarding the procedural exercise for interested gubernatorial aspirants”. The chairmen said the attempt to disqualify a “popular and accomplished Governor” by the Committee was “a despicable mockery and shameful tragic comedy staged on behalf of an APC national cabal with sinister agenda”.

Osunde who is the Chairman of Oredo Local Government Council said the outcome of the recent ignoble APC exercise regrettably represented “another odious exhibit in the series of undemocratic plots to sabotage and subvert the sacred will of the Edo electorate “.

The local government chairmen vowed that the “Abuja Screening debacle which was aimed at lessening the intensity of overwhelming support for the Governor has rather increased the passion and determination of ALGON for the resolution of progressive continuity and the completion of the eight-year expressed aspiration of the people “.