BREAKING: Edo 2024 – Government Declares Friday a Work-Free Day Ahead of Major Event!

The Edo State Government has declared Friday, September 20, a work-free day in the State. This is to enable workers and other electorate to travel to their voting areas ahead of the Saturday September 21 governorship election in the State.

According to a statement released by Joseph Eboigbe, Secretary to the State Government, security measures have been provided to ensure a free, fair, and credible election.

It reads in part, “It is hereby announced for the information of the general public that the Edo State Government has declared Friday, September 20, a work-free day in Edo State.

“This is to enable workers and other electorate to travel to their voting areas ahead of the September 21 governorship election in the State.”
The election scheduled for Saturday is the exercise expected to produce the successor to Godwin Obaseki whose eight-year rule ends in November. He was elected governor on the platform of the All-Progressives Congress, APC in 2016, but had to change party to run for second term in office in 2020. His predecessor and former godfather, Adams Oshiomhole, now a senator and a chieftain of his former party, is leading the opposition against Asue Ighodalo, candidate of the People’s Democratic Party, PDP and the one anointed by Obaseki. The election on Saturday appears like a three-horse race between Ighodalo, Monday Okpebholo of the APC and Olumide Akpata of the Labour Party, LP. But because of geographical consideration and fairness, the zoning formula appears to favour Okpebholo and Ighodalo, as Akpata comes from the Edo South senatorial district that produced the outgoing governor.
There are also concerns about possible violence during the election because of the hostility that dominated the campaigns, particularly between APC and PDP.
In fact, citing what it called obvious collaboration between the APC, which is the ruling party at the centre, and the police, Obaseki and PDP refused to sign the peace pact, a routine exercise preceding elections in Nigeria.
The governor said leaders of his party were being trailed and arrested by the police, a development he said was aimed at decapitating his party and creating an unfair advantage for the APC. Leaders of both parties traded blames over sponsorship of hostilities, driving to the background the issues that were supposed to dominate the campaigns, even as the fitness or otherwise of candidates of the leading parties became the issue above matters of governance.